African Entrepreneurship Record

The innovation of Kapolan’s water pump technology is also a microcosm of the development of East African countries’ agriculture in recent years. Of course, water conservancy is not only related to agriculture, but also has a huge impact on cities and shipping.

The natural precipitation in Kapolan is relatively small. Without advanced and complete water conservancy facilities, it would not be possible for it to become a new cotton planting base planned by Bohemia Province.

For example, cotton can also be planted in the eastern part of Bohemia Province, and the precipitation is relatively abundant, but the quality of cotton is not as good as that in the western region. Generally, the quality of cotton in arid or semi-arid areas is better, and the priority for planting cotton and other crops in these areas is to solve the water source problem.

The most prominent in this regard is the cotton planting area in Somalia. The water conservancy construction in the Somali region has made the Shabelle River and Juba River Basin a world-famous agricultural production area.

The same is true for Kapolan. Its water conservancy facilities construction began in the 1980s, developed rapidly in the 1990s and basically took shape. In just over a decade, the completion of such water conservancy projects naturally required the help of black workers.

As a relatively young country, East Africa's exploitation of black laborers has reached its peak in the past two decades. Without their efforts, East Africa's national agriculture would not have been able to catch up with other countries so quickly.

Even the United States, which has a relatively short history, has a history of large-scale modernization for hundreds of years. East Africa has closed the gap with Europe, the United States and other regions in just a few decades. The sacrifices must be astronomical.

The investigator from the Kapolan Water Conservancy Bureau did not rush to leave after completing his work. He was still quite interested in the agricultural development of Kosha Town. As a person who often deals with agriculture, the past two generations of East Africans have also witnessed the great changes in the agricultural development of East African countries.

Kosha Town was originally developed from a village. In the early days, only some food crops, including wheat and corn, were planted. With the development of agriculture and the change of national agricultural policies in recent years, Kosha Town began to widely plant cash crops such as cotton and tobacco.

In particular, the scale of cotton planting has grown from almost zero to the first in the city in just seven years.

During the First Five-Year Plan, the cotton planting area in Kosa Town increased the fastest. On the one hand, it was the improvement of water conservancy facilities, and on the other hand, it was the improvement of mechanization efficiency. Of course, the most important thing was the policy change, which promoted the transformation and development of agriculture in Kosa Town.

Walking in the fields of Kosa Town, you can see large-scale cotton fields. These cotton fields are not small in size, with standard geometric distribution and divided by canals.

"Now there are more and more tractors in the town, and the field planning is getting larger and larger. To adapt to this new agricultural machinery farming mode, livestock was mainly used for farming before." Tal introduced to him.

"Now the output of tractors is getting higher and higher. There are now a total of 28 tractors in our town's agricultural machinery station. If the surrounding villages are included, there should be more than 40 tractors. They are all newly allocated in the past five years and are equipped with corresponding agricultural tools."

The tractors used in Kosa Town are basically produced by Harare City. As for Kapoland City, where Kosa Town is located, it is a city with a relatively weak industrial foundation in the province, and its industry is limited to some light industrial fields.

"In recent years, agriculture has been undergoing adjustments, including the merger of villages and towns, water and electricity, road construction, farmland transformation, etc. The city is also actively building a new fertilizer plant. It is estimated that our city will be able to use its own fertilizers the year after next." The investigator also revealed some of the information he had obtained to Mayor Tal.

This is not a secret, but one of the key industrial projects of Kapolan City during the Second Five-Year Plan. In addition, Kapolan City will also build a cotton ginning plant to adapt to the increasing cotton planting area in Kapolan City.

Therefore, during the Second Five-Year Plan, Kapolan City was allocated a total of two modern factories, a small-scale fertilizer plant, and a medium-sized cotton ginning plant. From this, we can see that the current industrialization in East Africa is not easy.

The resources that can be allocated to more than 600 cities in East Africa during the Second Five-Year Plan are pitifully small. Some cities do not even have a modern factory. This is also the dilemma of industrial development in East Africa at present.

Of course, compared with the First Five-Year Plan, East Africa's Second Five-Year Plan obviously has more advantages, and East Africa, which is in the early stage of industrial development, must have a tortuous road to industrialization in the early stage, but as time goes by, the speed of industrialization will become faster and faster, especially East Africa has an absolute advantage in emerging industries.

"During the Second Five-Year Plan, it was already quite difficult to allocate industrial resources. Our province is still like this, and the difficulties in other parts of the country can be imagined. Of course, compared with the past, the development of East Africa in recent years is obvious to all. I don't know much about other places. Take our city as an example. The industrial and agricultural output value has increased by more than 30% compared with before the First Five-Year Plan."

"The development speed of the towns below is also very fast, especially in agriculture. When the Second Five-Year Plan is completed, the agricultural scale of our city may be more than doubled than before."

During the Second Five-Year Plan, Kapolan City responded to the provincial government's plan and focused on increasing the cotton planting area. Now Kapolan City's cotton planting ranks second in the province. If it doubles, it may become the largest cotton planting base in the province.

The confidence of Kapolan City to expand the cotton planting area comes from the water conservancy facilities. If the water conservancy facilities of Kapolan City were not perfect ten years ago, there would not be the conditions to expand the cotton planting area even if it wanted to.

As the westernmost part of Bohemia, Kapolan City still has a lot of available land. As for labor, although the black population has decreased rapidly in recent years, the birth rate of the city is relatively high, so there is no need to worry about labor.

Cotton picking requires a lot of labor to complete manually. After all, East Africa does not have mature cotton picking technology, which is quite regrettable.

Of course, in the early 20th century, cotton picking did not have a better way for major cotton-growing countries in the world. Even the western United States had to honestly adopt manual methods. In the past, plantations in the southern United States mainly relied on black slaves to complete this work.

Of course, cotton picking in East Africa is mainly completed by the cooperation of nationals and black laborers. Of course, with the rapid decline in the number of black laborers, this also makes East Africa more urgent to develop new agricultural tools.

Not only cotton, but also crops such as rice and wheat have similar needs. However, due to the complexity and difficulty of cotton picking, the progress of agricultural tool research and development is not ideal.

The mechanized planting of rice and wheat has already been seen, but because the technology is not yet mature, it cannot be promoted on a large scale like tractors.

During the Second Five-Year Plan, the technological changes in the agricultural sector in East Africa mainly focused on increasing the output of tractors, pesticides, and fertilizers, as well as further improving farmland water conservancy construction.

As for the further development of agriculture, it is mainly subject to the difficulties of technological breakthroughs, but difficulties do not mean no achievements.

With the development of education and industry in East Africa, new technologies in East Africa are accelerating, and the results of scientific research have increased significantly, especially during the First Five-Year Plan, a large number of new technologies have been applied, which greatly improved the progress of industrialization in East Africa. Therefore, during the Second Five-Year Plan, the East African government will further promote the application of new technologies in agriculture and industry.