African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1217: Chapter 226: The Tea Market

India has proven with facts that having a large population is remarkable. Even though bad bamboo rarely produces good shoots, when there are many shoots, it can to some extent compensate for the quality disadvantages. At the very least, people cannot do without basic needs such as clothing, food, and shelter—this is the charm of a market with 300 million people.

At the East Africa World Expo, good things abound, with automobiles being just an appetizer. At this year’s East Africa World Expo, East Africa alone provided thousands of scientific products, and counting other products, the numbers reach tens of thousands.

Besides East Africa, the exhibits from other countries also had their own styles and characteristics, attracting the attention of many tourists and businessmen.

The Far East Empire pavilion.

”This is a type of tea produced in the southeastern mountainous region of the Far East Empire. Compared to our East African tea, it’s sweeter on the palate but lacks aroma. However, both have their unique flavors...” said an East African from Bajamojo after sampling a free cup of tea.

Undoubtedly, the tea from the Far East Empire is quite popular among the East African people, who have a considerable tea-drinking population base.

While East Africa is a major tea-producing nation, it cannot shake off the significant disadvantage of having relatively few tea varieties. After decades of accumulation, East Africa has only selected and cultivated less than twenty types of tea that have a decent taste and are suitable for local cultivation.

However, just the teas from the Far East Empire participating in this year’s East Africa World Expo number nearly a hundred, greatly satisfying the curiosity and taste buds of East African visitors.

Among the tea merchants participating, Fujian teas are particularly prevalent. It’s worth mentioning that due to time constraints, many companies are still arriving, so the expo’s exhibits are continuously increasing.

East African tea enthusiast Adlencia said: ”Our country’s tea industry has only a few decades of history, whereas the tea culture and history of the Far East Empire goes back thousands of years. So, in terms of variety, East Africa indeed struggles to compare with the Far East Empire.”

”Another factor is the complexity of the climate and geography in the Far East Empire, which far surpasses our country. This serves as a foundational advantage for cultivating diverse tea varieties. And indeed, in the Far East Empire, there are numerous regional tea varieties.”

Many factors influence tea growth, and the Far East Empire’s unique geographical advantages are one reason it has become a significant tea kingdom in the world.

By comparison, this is also a disadvantage for East Africa. Although East Africa’s climate is suitable for tea growing, its microclimates and landscapes aren’t as complex as those in the Far East Empire.

It can also be said that the potential for East African tea cultivation is not as developed as in the Far East Empire. East Africa has a shorter history of tea cultivation and many competitors.

For example, in Kenya, the best district for growing East African tea is also the best coffee-growing region in East Africa. These two beverages indeed compete with each other.

”However, our tea cultivation surpasses India’s. Although India has a tea growing history of over a hundred years, they introduced limited varieties back then and have relatively few tea-making techniques. Moreover, India’s climate isn’t as complex as ours.”

India’s tea cultivation history dates back to the 18th century, giving it over a century of history. It may seem long, but it’s only relative to East Africa’s brief history as a newcomer.

Despite this nearly hundred-year gap, East Africa can still reverse it through efforts in a short period, which indeed is the case.

By 1914, despite East Africa remaining the world’s third-largest tea exporter, the gap between it and India had greatly narrowed, and in terms of variety and quality, it had become second only to the Far East Empire.

”Of course, the most significant factor is our country’s rapid industrial and technological development in recent years, which has allowed large-scale, scientific tea cultivation to vastly surpass both the Far East Empire and India.”

In the era of industrialized tea cultivation, especially with the advent of industrialization, the key to a product’s international market penetration is whether it can achieve large-scale industrial production.

Prior to East Africa becoming the world’s third-largest tea producer, India undisputedly held an absolute advantage in this area.

But changes began in the early 20th century. With the outbreak of industrial and technological advancements in East Africa, the tea industry there experienced a new round of qualitative changes. On one hand, breakthroughs in tea cultivation, planting, harvesting, and other technologies occurred, significantly increasing the mechanization of tea gardens. On the other hand, tea processing rapidly transitioned from small workshops to more advanced modern factories, ensuring better quality and flavor, stabilizing market sales, and reinforcing brand awareness.

Through years of development, East African tea has established a foothold internationally, opening and stabilizing long-term development in the Central and Eastern European market, becoming quite popular in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.

Undoubtedly, the country most impacted by the rise of East African tea is India, where the competition between the two countries is fiercest.

Although the Far East Empire is the world’s largest tea producer, its domestic market is stable and vast. As a result, it doesn’t perform remarkably overseas and thus poses limited threat to Indian and East African teas.

Moreover, as the world’s third most tea-loving country, behind only the Far East Empire and the United Kingdom, East Africa imports a large quantity of tea from the Far East Empire to meet its domestic demand, in addition to its own production.

Though East Africans are not as passionate about tea drinking as the British, East African tea enthusiasts are evidently more discerning than the British.

After all, culturally, East Africa is greatly influenced by the Far East Empire, resulting in a level of tea understanding second only to the Imperial People.

Even though East Africa also produces good tea, the variety of quality tea is ultimately insufficient to fully satisfy the diversified demands of its tea-drinking populace domestically, making it inevitable to import tea from the Far East Empire.

Regarding India, its tea problems are similar to those in East Africa, with few varieties and overly uniform flavors, placing Indian tea at the bottom of the tea hierarchy in East Africa.

This is easily understood; in the past, Indian tea had an absolute advantage in international market share, but it was immensely challenging for Indian tea to gain recognition from the Far East Empire.

Ultimately, there was no cultural foundation for Indian tea; it was merely a purely tropical economic crop. While East African tea cultivation is also economically oriented, East African tea culture exists as well.

In the perception of East African citizens, tea from the Far East Empire is considered high-end, East African tea ranks as mid-range, and Indian tea is viewed as low-end, with teas from other countries deemed non-mainstream.

This subjective notion naturally reflects national emotions but also indicates the significant growth of East African tea in recent years. After all, when East African tea is truly remarkable, East Africans wouldn’t brazenly place their tea above India’s.

In contrast, Indians truly lack self-awareness, daring to boast even more than East Africans. In Indian mouths, their tea is deemed world number one. If only considering current export volumes, this seems accurate. However, such market share is mainly due to occupying the British colonial market’s advantages rather than intrinsic Indian tea excellence.

As mentioned earlier, tea, while an important economic crop in East Africa, faces diverse options in the beverage sector, diversifying East Africa’s investment in the tea industry significantly.

In beverages, East Africa shows a clear trend of development in diversity. Historically, the world’s three major traditional drinks—tea, coffee, and cocoa—all have corresponding products in East Africa and occupy certain positions in the international market, particularly East African coffee, which has seen rapidly improving reputation over recent years, quickly capturing substantial markets.

And in other beverages, especially alcohol, soda, various sugary drinks, milk, etc., East Africa excels as well.

Before the outbreak of World War I, East Africa had already become the world’s second-largest beverage producer and consumer, second only to the United States.

After all, East Africa has a shorter period of openness, resulting in a gap in market activity compared to the United States, especially in the consumer sector, where East Africans are clearly less open than Americans.