African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1140: Chapter 169: The Startup Team

Moreover, Bob can’t afford wages now, so he can only collaborate with others in business, and there’s no better choice than his high school friend, Li Laite.

However, Li Laite also has his own concerns. As a student who was educated in East Africa’s low-cost compulsory education system, he spent most of his time wasting away at school, so he still hopes to have a stable job.

Li Laite was assigned the job of a factory worker at a furniture factory, which was no better than Bob’s hemp textile factory. But Li Laite considers himself quite capable of enduring hardship, after all, in East African secondary education, most students have a physical condition above the qualified line. Although not as good as many in Europe who were child laborers due to family reasons from a young age, they’re not the type to be weak bookworms who can’t handle manual work.

This is actually understandable. East Africa’s poor education focuses on sports because the costs are low. Textbooks are not needed, nor are highly qualified physical education teachers. Plus, there are fewer class hours, lax management, and adequate sleep, making most students very healthy physically.

So Li Laite said, ”I feel I’m still suited for working at the furniture factory, after all, I don’t have skills like yours. Although the furniture factory work is a bit tiring, it’s stable, there’s no need to mess around.”

Bob advised him, ”But there’s limited upward mobility; without connections, it’s hard to stand out. However, starting a business with me is different. We would be the bosses, could freely allocate our time, and our earnings would entirely depend on our abilities.”

”I will handle production, you will handle sales. This division of labor will definitely earn more than working at the factory. Now with relaxed policies, freedom of job choice is certainly the trend.”

Bob knows well that Li Laite has good eloquence, far better than his own. And Bob needs Li Laite to help him sell the products.

Li Laite nodded and said, ”That does make sense, but I’m afraid my parents won’t agree.”

Bob: ”Your parents can’t control you forever. Besides, we’re adults now and can decide our own lives. Outside of East Africa, most countries are free markets, so starting a business with me isn’t shameful. We might even achieve those legendary American wealth stories...”

Moved by Bob’s emotional appeal and logical arguments, Li Laite finally said, ”Why don’t we give it a try first? We’ll limit it to three days, and if the sales performance is good, I’ll join you.”

Bob nodded, ”No problem. I’ll provide the products, you sell them on the street, and in three days, we’ll review the results and make the final decision.”

Thus began their initial attempt. Bob worked overnight to produce a batch of radio sets, and the next day, Li Laite took the somewhat rudimentary products and started his sales journey, resembling those street vendors from the past selling discs or sneaking into schools to sell pens.

Bob’s hand-crafted radios, though quite basic, were considered high-end home appliances in East Africa due to being electronic products.

After calculating costs, they set a relatively reasonable price, a third lower than the market price for radios. Without considering appearance or origins, the specific functions were not much different.

Unexpectedly, the products sold quite well. As the most developed city in East Africa, Dar es Salaam City had decent consumer capacity. In just three days, they sold eight radios, and when splitting the earnings, it was clearly far higher than factory wages.

Looking at the twenty Rhine Shields earned from selling hand-crafted radios, Li Laite was unusually excited, ”Bob, this is the first time I’ve held such a large amount since I was little. Making this much in just three days is unimaginable for a year.”

Bob was also thrilled, ”I told you this business has great prospects. Dar es Salaam City has quite a few wealthy individuals, and we underestimated the market potential. Now, with few competitors, that’s our advantage. If we seize the opportunity, we can be the first to succeed. It’s much better than slogging away in a factory. Once we earn more, we might be able to open a small workshop, then eventually upgrade to a factory, and we could become executives.”

Li Laite deeply agreed with Bob’s words, as concrete profits are more motivating than any words. This strengthened their confidence to start a business, and with hand-crafted radios, Bob and Li Laite earned their first ”bucket of gold” in life.

In the future, these two young men would expand and strengthen their business, establishing their own company, specializing in manufacturing and selling electronic products, achieving some success.

Across East Africa, many chose entrepreneurship like Bob and Li Laite, creating a batch of wealthy individuals. With foreign capital inflows, the entire East African socio-economic landscape flourished.

Of course, due to the limited startup capital, the difference between East African private capital and state-owned capital remains significant. The East African Government controls the economic lifeline of the country. East Africa still mainly operates under a planned economy system, with the free market being a major supplement to the current East African economy, impacting the overall economy minimally.

Yet, it greatly improved East Africa’s service industry and light industry, as well as the development of handicrafts, making East Africa’s industrial structure start to develop more balanced and comprehensively.

Accompanied by this were the partial social upheavals from 1911 to 1913 in East Africa. Opening market competition directly led to operational difficulties for some East African state-owned enterprises, especially many mediocre small local enterprises.

These small local enterprises were easily replaced by workshops or other private companies, forcing the East African Government to upgrade and weed out these enterprises.

The term ”unemployment” began appearing in East Africa, leading to a certain increase in crime activities, consequently raising the workload for the East African police stations.

But overall, it’s within government control. Although unemployment issues arose, they are not large-scale in the overheated economic state. As long as one is not lazy, jobs can generally be found. Nonetheless, human nature is vulnerable to temptation, and some will always try to take shortcuts and venture into crime.

The pros and cons of the new economic policy became apparent, but compared to the chaos in Europe and America, the overall social order in East Africa is very good.

Overall, East African economic development now presents a thriving scene, with the industrial growth rate even surpassing the accomplishments of the first two Five-Year Plans.

Logically, entering the third Five-Year Plan period, East African industrial development shouldn’t surpass the previous two Five-Year Plans in achievements, but the new economic policy and large loans have injected new blood into the East African economy.

During the third Five-Year Plan, East Africa faced pressures from rapid population growth and relatively lagging overseas market expansion. Amid this context, they achieved more remarkable development achievements than the first two Five-Year Plans, largely due to the contributions of the new economic policy.

Ernst was pleased to see this, although developing the economy caused many problems, in order to tackle potential production shortages after a future world war, these minor issues can be overlooked for now, and adjustments can be made after the war ends. Ernst only ensures the country’s major direction is correct, as many minor mistakes are unavoidable.

Even without the new economic policy, East Africa would face many corresponding social issues. Any policy should adapt to the Era’s development for adjustment—an unchanging society is a dead end.