African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 240: Chapter 229

The foundation of East Africa lies in the East African Plateau, approximately one million square kilometers, primarily covering Tanzania, Kenya, and the Great Lakes Region. This is an already stabilized territory, and with some surrounding areas, the East African Kingdom has no fear of competition from any forces on nearly two million square kilometers of land.

With the advantage of a larger number of immigrants, even with the addition of all indigenous forces, other colonizers find it hard to pose a threat to the East African Plateau and its surrounding areas.

Now, the southwest region, namely the former Zambia region, because it was only recently incorporated, has instead become the vulnerable area of the East African Kingdom, which has made temporary concessions to the local indigenous forces.

Without external forces intervening, East Africa can naturally slowly consume the southwest region, but once any force instigates the locals, the East African Kingdom will find itself in a passive position.

Besides these two places, the Mitumba Mountains, the coastal plains, and the northern desert area also occupy a significant portion of the land. All these areas together sum up to nearly four million square kilometers.

”Your Majesty, this is the current map of the East African Kingdom, revised after numerous comparisons by us.”

(Map)

Von der Leyen spread a map in front of Constantine, and upon closer inspection, the shape of East Africa somewhat resembles a leaf, wide in the middle and narrow on both sides, slanting into the African interior.

”This map looks really awkward! It appears quite strange,” Constantine commented as he looked at the map.

”Your Majesty, this is because when expanding East African territories, we avoided some slightly stronger forces, and in the west, we only reached the east bank of the Luapula River due to the obstacles of the Mitumba Mountains, the Congo River, and the tropical rainforest. Meanwhile, along the plateau, we are unimpeded in our southwest expansion, and the lack of other forces inland also provides us with conditions.”

”In the future, this plateau will be the core area of East Africa, with a similar climate, large enough area, gentle topography, and advantageous terrain over the surroundings,” Felix said.

”In developing the southwestern plateau region, the main problem we now face is transportation. Previously in the east, most rivers ran east-west, aligning with our expansion direction, while the southwestern rivers are mostly tributaries of the Zambezi River, extending north-south, thus to facilitate transportation in this area, more bridges must be constructed.”

”Not only that, beyond these tributaries, the Zambezi River itself is a natural barrier, and if we don’t resolve the Zambezi River issue, our future expansion will also be affected.”

”I think we should let the inland River and Lake Team cooperate more with us in the future. The wetlands, marshes, and lakes in Africa are numerous, and their small boats are very suitable. Given the conditions in East Africa, we can also build more suspension bridges to temporarily replace, ensuring at least the smooth passage of troops and weaponry inland.”

From the map, it is not difficult to see that the future expansion direction of East Africa, if avoiding conflict with other colonizers, only has three directions: one is the southern Sultanate, another is the Luba Kingdom and Lunda Kingdom, and the third is Zimbabwe.

The southern Sultanate can be expanded, but it is also quite limited, since further north is North Africa, and west is not a good place, being rather water-scarce.

So, only the western Luba Kingdom and Lunda Kingdom and the southern Zimbabwe remain. These two areas are quite good, with one being the Longda Plateau and the other the Matebele Plateau.

As for which one to choose, Ernst doesn’t even need to look and directly chooses Zimbabwe.

Ernst is very familiar with the country of Zimbabwe, after all, in his previous life, Zimbabwean currency was famous worldwide, with a face value higher than hell money, and Ernst also worked in Africa in his previous life, familiar with African resources like the back of his hand. Due to the special nature of his work, Ernst frequently traveled across African countries, a characteristic also seen in the personnel working in Far East’s engineering and mining industries in Africa.

Zimbabwe has the most precious resources of this era, coal and iron. It is no exaggeration to say that with Zimbabwe, relying on its coal and iron resources, East Africa can directly transform into an industrial nation.

Looking at the resource analysis report of Zimbabwe from later generations, it is clear that among a number of African countries, very few have both coal and iron appearing simultaneously, often the highest-ranked resources are diamonds, non-ferrous metals, and some rare metals. Coal and iron rank among the top resources in Zimbabwe, while coal from Zimbabwe has high quality, with low impurities, belonging to premium coal.

(Zimbabwe is rich in mineral resources, with a rough estimate of more than 80 types, and over 40 types have been basically proven. The main mineral products are diamonds, platinum, chrome, gold, iron, coal, nickel, copper, zinc, and lead; industrial minerals include limestone, phosphates, clay, and dolomite. Additionally, newly proven methane gas reserves are extremely abundant. Preliminary exploration estimates show that platinum reserves are the second-largest in the world, chrome reserves the second-largest, iron ore reserves about 38 billion tons, coal reserves 27 billion tons, and coal-bed gas reserves 500 million cubic meters. In 2001, a diamond mine with abundant reserves was discovered in Zimbabwe, and preliminary exploration results indicate its diamond reserves rank first in the world. — Data source: Economic and Commercial Section of the Embassy of the Republic of the Far East in the Republic of Zimbabwe)

Coal and oil, these two energy sources are most important for industry, while coal and iron are the foundations of the First Industrial Revolution.

The only shortcoming of Zimbabwe is the lack of water, with its rainfall level on par with Far East’s Shannxi, where the rainfall consistently stays at over 600 millimeters annually (source: Shannxi government official website), whereas Zimbabwe’s rainfall ranges between 400 and 900 millimeters, and both exhibit uneven distribution—Shannxi decreases from south to north, while Zimbabwe decreases from east to west.

This is not a problem. Without coal and iron resources, East Africa can only be an agricultural country and a mining export country; with coal and iron resources, East Africa can become an industrial nation.

Compared with other continents, the African continent inherently lacks coal, although iron ore is considerable, mostly concentrated in West Africa. In the entire Central South Africa, there were only three countries that did not lack coal and iron resources in the previous life: South Africa, Angola, and Zimbabwe.

The first two have now been occupied, leaving Zimbabwe as the ”Land of No Master,” a country historically known as Rhodesia in the previous life, gradually occupied by the Boers and the British after 1880. Slowly forming the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, including Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, now the East African Kingdom holds two-thirds of these lands, and taking Zimbabwe would block the Boer people’s northward expansion and also block the Portuguese’s expansion to the west.

Therefore, after occupying Zimbabwe, East Africa must begin to plan, targeting one of the two; otherwise, the threat is too great. As for who becomes East Africa’s enemy first, it depends on whose hand reaches farthest. Originally, Ernst was always on guard against the Portuguese colonies, but the Boers are also stubborn, and a two-line battle is definitely unwise; plus, taking the initiative to strike one would be better.