African Entrepreneurship Record-Chapter 784 - 88 Angola Legacy Inheritance (Continued)

Aside from taking over Luanda, East Africa has already started a new wave of population migration, and nothing reassures control over Angola more than immigration.

Of course, this is also to preserve Portugal's legacy and avoid resource waste. Although the Portuguese government has been expelled, production in Angola must continue.

Angola is very different from the regions previously occupied by East Africa. Under Portuguese governance, though not highly developed, its agricultural conditions are advantageous, and East Africa cannot simply ignore its vast plantations.

After all, in the non-mechanized era, land reclamation was very challenging, as East Africa deeply understands. It took East Africa over twenty years to build its national agricultural scale through significant time and labor costs.

Now Angola has vast plantations ready to be exploited, much easier than re-cultivating lands in East Africa.

The Portuguese have accumulated wealth over centuries, especially in highly developed western coastal areas, where East Africa can directly move in and resettle a large population.

This is crucial for Ernst, affecting East Africa's future industrial layout, particularly in bridging national trade and boosting the central economy.

Although the three central provinces are resource-rich, development in inland regions is limited by common barriers faced by many nations. In this era, maritime trade remains the primary mode of transport.

For inland regions to match coastal areas, the most effective method is activating the inland waterway network, like how the Yangtze River allows Far East's coastal goods to reach the Sichuan Basin; Germany's balanced economic development partly comes from its canal network, aside from railroads.

East Africa doesn't have superior waterway conditions, but if the western segment of its Central Railway is activated, it could achieve up to seventy percent efficiency in the future.

The inland economy develops mainly by connecting with peripheral areas, and current East African industrial investments concentrate on inland regions, giving the three provinces an initial advantage and partly offsetting logistics disadvantages.

In other words, inland economic development relies primarily on the domestic market, while coastal economies depend on foreign markets. In the era of sea power, coastal economies inevitably gain advantages, which East Africa seeks to address through various methods.

Moreover, East African inland regions differ significantly from the neglected central areas in the Far East Empire or America, especially after acquiring Angola.

Most major industrial resources in America and the Far East Empire, in terms of crucial energy and minerals, concentrate in marginal areas, like America's Great Lakes vicinity and Far East Empire's western and northeastern regions.

East Africa's resources principally gather in the central-southern parts, but the southern climate conditions are inferior to the central region, offering weaker environmental carrying capacity—a central economic advantage.

Furthermore, American and Far East Empire transport are hindered by mountains; America's West faces the Rocky Mountains. If not for the Internet's rise in the 21st century and robust Far East Empire economies, comparing with close-to-Europe old industrial zones would be challenging.

Far East Empire's west not only has many mountains but also neighbors underdeveloped Central Asian economies to the west, whose land transport costs cannot compete with sea transport costs, and lacks water resources to effectively connect with central economies.

East Africa differs, as both East and West coasts face similar situations, such as the West Coast facing the Americas and the East Coast facing Eurasia, representing distributed market demand.

In terms of energy and raw materials, the West Coast is near West Africa, while the East Coast is close to the Middle East, plus East Africa's northern lands can connect North Africa.

This means East Africa is close to the world's three main oil production regions, and the same applies to iron ore and other raw materials.

West Africa's mining resources are comparable to East Africa's and can complement it, with oil being notably scarce in East Africa.

This somewhat compensates for the lack of oil resources on the continent itself, though Angola's abundant oil and gas resources sufficiently meet East Africa's development needs, as long as the population isn't excessive.

In short, East Africa's focus on Angola is unprecedented, akin to Ernst bypassing Mozambique to secure the Matebel Plateau and Transvaal Republic first.

...

First Town.

As the main person in charge of post-war economic recovery in Angola, Von der Leyen is reporting government work to Ernst.

"We've dispatched over six hundred professionals from various fields to Angola; however, this is merely a drop in the bucket for the region, as daily operations largely rely on the military, which can only manage security issues and defend against sea-born threats."

"Therefore, to restore Angola's production capabilities, we need a substantial population to achieve this. Given the populace scarcity in central regions, we'll have to explore solutions from the east."

"Currently, our immigration policy has been greatly impacted by war, with even migration from the Far East temporarily suspended."

"Previously, we had gathered many personnel from the east into the military or to support central and western battlefields; thus, given our national population situation, westward development remains labor-intensive."

This labor shortage constraint has been felt once again by East Africa over the past decade, even though East Africa's population is significant from a global perspective.

East Africa faces a major issue—its habitable regions are more abundant than similar countries, mainly reflected in arable land size.

Apart from desert areas, most of East Africa seems conducive to agricultural development, and even the desert regions have fertile lands like the Somali Two Rivers suitable for economic agriculture.

Russia, sharing large land areas globally, might envy this, as the differences between tropical and polar regions are stark.

Although East Africa's land area isn't comparable to Russia's, calculating effective land shows a reversal. Even the Congo Basin, although currently unsuitable for development, can be effectively utilized with enough investment aside from rainforest core areas.

"Moreover, the Portuguese developed Angola very little, but after centuries of operation, the legacy left is substantial. Besides vast land resources, we control numerous mines; to maintain and advance Angola's future construction, we must initially immigrate forty thousand people to ensure normal plantation and mining operations."

The Portuguese in Angola are now mostly under East African control, which has caused plantation and mine production to halt.

Restoring production activities in these plantations and mines is currently a major goal for the East African government, necessitating personnel with administrative experience.

"Following precedents, we can transfer professionals from existing farms and mines to Angola, though Portuguese Black Slaves are hard to communicate with, hence requiring a group of Black people from the central-west to act as interpreters and coordinate command over the local Angolan Black Slaves."

Relying solely on forty thousand people can merely maintain a basic population framework. Retaining Angola's plantations and mines inevitably requires support from the two to three million native Angolan Blacks, an unavoidable circumstance.