African Entrepreneurship Record

March 2, 1894.

Kisumu City.

"A total of fourteen cars were counted today, as well as a large amount of goods, mainly industrial products. All of these goods will be sent to Jimma City and then exported to the Abyssinian Empire."

At Kisumu Railway Station, brand-new cars built from the Mombasa Automobile Factory arrived in Kisumu yesterday. Mombasa is the only city in the northern industrial belt that currently has vehicle manufacturing capabilities.

Cities in the northern industrial belt such as Kisumu and Nairobi are only responsible for producing some auto parts, which are then transported to Mombasa by rail and then armed.

The automobile industry in East Africa currently has five centers, namely Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, Mbeya, Harare, and Bulawayo. In addition, the new Frankfurt project was established after the last Ernst inspection. The city's automobile industry may become the sixth automobile production city in East Africa in the future.

In addition, the upstream and downstream industrial cities involve a total of 78 East African cities and regions in order to catalyze the unification of the domestic market, reduce production costs, and enhance the strength of the East African automobile industry.

Among several automobile production bases, the automobile industry production capacity in inland areas of East Africa is significantly stronger than that in coastal areas, and priority is given to meeting the construction and development needs of inland areas.

This is one of the benefits of deploying high-end industries in inland areas. Even if technology and management models spill over, they will first spread to the outer regions of East Africa. By the time it is transmitted to other countries and regions in the world, the inland areas of East Africa have already completed the upgrading and upgrading of products. Technology upgrade.

Of course, Mombasa and Dar es Salaam in the coastal areas are currently developing well due to their comprehensive strength, but in the future as competitors increase, their advantages will be further reduced, such as the New Hamburg Port, Beira Port, Cabinda Port, The growth rates of the Port of Luanda, Benguela and the nearby Port of Lobito are all ahead of Dar es Salaam and Mombasa.

With East Africa's conquest of Mozambique and Angola, the monopoly of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam on East Africa's coastal foreign trade will be diverted in the future, forming a more multifaceted East African economic structure.

The so-called one point and many aspects means that central East Africa is the center and radiates in the four directions of east, west, north and south. At present, except for the British colony of Cape Town, East Africa is fully exerting its efforts in the east, west and north directions.

Although the north is a continent, many inland ports have been established, among which Jimma City, at the junction with the Abyssinian Empire, is the leader.

In addition, there are the city of Gezira, the town of Dire Dawa, and the city of Saar, which are connected to Egypt, the Red Sea coast, and the colony of Sigmaringen respectively.

However, Egypt is a British colony. The economy of the Red Sea coast to the north of Dire Dawa is relatively weak. Sigmaringen is also under development. It is temporarily unable to compete with the large market of the long-established Abyssinian Empire.

Therefore, the Abyssinian Empire is an important link in the East African economic circle. In the past thirty years, the economic and trade between the two countries has continued to strengthen, especially after the bad relations between the Abyssinian Empire and Egypt and Italy. The Abyssinian Empire in Haikou could only completely fall to East Africa.

Currently, the Abyssinian Empire's military products, industrial products, and high-end luxury products are basically from East Africa, which has become a dumping ground for East African products. East Africa has also become the largest trading country in the Abyssinian Empire.

And on this train from Kisumu to Jimma are the industrial products sold in East Africa to the Abyssinian Empire today. The increasingly prosperous trade between East Africa and the Abyssinian Empire has also led to Turka The development of cities surrounding the Namibia Railway.

As early as a few years ago, with the completion of the construction of the Turkana Railway, it starts in Kisumu City, passes through the hinterland of Turkana Province, the west bank of Lake Turkana, and then passes through the southern part of the Ethiopian Plateau and enters the Jisumu border with East Afghanistan. Horse Market, and then enter Abyssinia from Jimma City.

"Including today's batch of cars, the Abyssinian Empire's imports of cars from our country this year may have exceeded 50. It is only March, and it seems that it is very likely to exceed the 167 cars last year." Railway employee Alverde said.

"This shows that the Abyssinian Empire has a large economy. Even though it is poor, the upper class has strong consumption power, and the Abyssinian Empire is also rich in resources. Now there are imports from the Abyssinian Empire on the railway every day. The export of these agricultural products and minerals has created huge value for the Abyssinian Empire, so the powerful people of Abyssinia can be so luxurious," worker Andrew replied.

It can be said that most of the agricultural and mineral resources of the Abyssinian Empire were cheaper in East Africa, especially in the northern industrial belt and Turkana Province.

Although the war with Italy in the past few years has further reduced the territory, the Abyssinian Empire is still the largest country in Northeast Africa after Egypt.

The territory still maintains more than 300,000 square kilometers, and most of it is the core area of ​​the previous life. Except for the northeastern part, which has lost its traditional core territory, most of the other areas are areas suitable for farming and rich in resources and products.

The Italian Red Sea Colony expanded the territory of the Abyssinian Empire east of Desai on the basis of Eritrea, most of which was the transition zone between desert and plateau plain.

Although East Africa occupied a lot of Ethiopia's territory in the previous life, it was mainly in the southern mountains (East African Rift Zone) and the arid areas of the Ogaden.

Therefore, the overall size of the Abyssinian Empire is still considerable, and the plateau area is inherently easy to defend and difficult to attack. This is the fundamental reason why Italy cannot annex the Abyssinian Empire.

Of course, Italy will not have this opportunity in the future. Essentially, Italy today is different from its previous life. It can only be regarded as a small and medium-sized country in Europe. Now that there is a balanced regional stability in East Africa, the opportunity for Italy to annex the Abyssinian Empire no longer exists. .

Moreover, after losing its territory in the northeast, the Abyssinian Empire completely stopped the idea of ​​regaining the Red Sea outlet, making it completely a landlocked country and could only carry out economic activities with East Africa in the south.

Of course, the Abyssinian Empire is not a completely disadvantaged party in the economies of the two countries. As an important crossroads in Northeast Africa, the Abyssinian Empire has restored relations with Egypt in recent years, indirectly opening up the relationship between Egypt and Egypt. Trade links between East Africa.

The restoration of relations between Egypt and the Abyssinian Empire was ultimately due to Italy's interference, which made the original disputed territorial issues between the two countries no longer exist.

After the Abyssinian Empire improved relations with neighboring countries, its economic development has been generally stable in recent years, and it has started a "second-rate dealer" business to transport East African commodities to North Africa.

With the blessing of railways, transportation costs are not much higher than sea transportation, especially in the Sudan area where inland transportation in Egypt is poor.

On the whole, the Abyssinian Empire has been completely integrated into the East African economic circle. Although the trade between East Africa and the Abyssinian Empire is suspected of economic colonization, it meets the needs of the Abyssinian Empire.

The first is that after years of turmoil and colonial invasions, the Abyssinian imperial government relied on arms from East Africa to maintain social stability and the integrity of the country's territorial sovereignty.

Secondly, East Africa did not adopt strong measures in trade with the Abyssinian Empire. Like the United States now, it focused on implicit economic colonization rather than direct plunder and aggression.

Although East Africa has occupied a lot of Ethiopian territory in its previous life, the Abyssinian Empire is not the same as Ethiopia. These lands do not originally belong to the Abyssinian Empire, but at most belong to its affiliated or even hostile sphere of influence.

In its previous life, the Abyssinian Empire learned from the power of the West before conquering the southern region by force and eventually forming Ethiopia.