African Entrepreneurship Record-Chapter 811 - 15: East Africa Meteorological Bureau

With Mozambique and Angola falling into the hands of East Africa, East Africa no longer conceals its ambitions for these regions, and various government departments and subordinate agencies have begun to enter these areas under the leadership of the cabinet.

The spearhead is government institutions such as the Meteorological Bureau and the National Land Resources Survey Bureau. For the newly added territories, the limited data that East Africa can obtain is very scarce.

Although the Portuguese colonized for hundreds of years, the actual effective development of Angola and Mozambique has really only occurred in recent years.

The director of the East African Meteorological Bureau, Wells, said: "At present, there are large areas in Angola and Mozambique that have had long-term absence of human activity, and there may even be various deserters from wartime operations, so personnel working in these areas should be equipped with firearms and prioritize setting up observation stations in areas already developed by the Portuguese, paying attention to personnel safety."

During the war, many Black soldiers in the Portuguese army seized the opportunity to flee; these soldiers carried modern weaponry provided by the Portuguese government, making them highly threatening.

While East Africa has not yet carried out a "cleansing" throughout Angola, the main force is advancing southward, and at this time, apart from a few cities and important agricultural regions, there are virtually no extra populations present.

Portuguese captives are primarily concentrated in the eastern port areas, ready to be handed over to the Portuguese government, provided that the Portuguese offer East Africa the desired terms.

Therefore, the work of the East African Meteorological Bureau involves summarizing the climate characteristics of Angola and Mozambique and completing the national climate map to guide East African agricultural production, which is of vital importance to East Africa.

As a nation founded on agriculture, East Africa is historically the first agricultural civilization and industrial nation in sub-Saharan Africa.

Agriculture contributes over eighty percent to the economy of East Africa and accounts for seventy percent of national fiscal revenue. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

This key characteristic dictates that East Africa must compile its own agricultural calendar, and the north-south stretch of countries on the continent accentuates this trait in East Africa.

Countries spanning more latitudes often face more complex climate conditions than those spanning more longitudes.

Typical is the Eurasian continent; civilization spreads primarily in regions at the same latitude, conducive to cultural exchanges. But Africa is different; prior to the industrial age, Africa was a region highly unsuitable for agricultural production due to its climate being vastly different from that of Eurasia.

East Africa's rainy season mainly concentrates in the first half of the year, centered on the Congo Basin, which is the region with the most abundant rainfall on the African continent. From March to July, the rainy season moves to the north, then after August shifts to the south.

South Africa is a region with weakening rain belt effects; the Great Lakes Region is consistently rainy year-round, and the eastern plains (including Tanzania and Mozambique) also have very abundant precipitation.

The central region (Zambia, southern Congo Plateau), western Angola, and the Nile River Basin (South Sudan) show particularly notable seasonal changes with rain patterns similar to those of the Far East Empire's monsoon climate zones.

Other areas have less rainfall, a typical example being Matabele Province (Zimbabwe), but it is very suitable for agricultural development, comparable to the North China Plain.

Overall, East Africa's rainfall is not as abundant as the Far East Empire, but the distribution is more even, with a symmetric distribution of more in the middle and less in the north and south.

Regarding temperature, East Africa is more balanced, mainly influenced by the terrain. High-altitude areas are often wheat-growing zones, while low-altitude areas prefer rice cultivation. Of course, when rainfall is insufficient, it is more appropriate to cultivate drought-resistant crops such as millet.

In summary, East Africa, as a major nation second in size only to Britain and Russia, is also one of the regions highly suitable for agricultural development.

Under such favorable natural conditions, one key reason for the slow development of African civilization is its inherent advantages of African nomadic civilization and hunter-gatherer civilization over agricultural civilization.

Like the African "powerful" nations East Africa eliminated, Ndebele Kingdom, Zulu Kingdom, Boer Republic, etc., are typical nomadic civilizations.

Only the Great Lakes Region developed a relatively "advanced" agricultural civilization, but the Great Lakes Region, the northern areas (South Sudan, Ethiopia), and the former East African coast (including Zanzibar Sultanate and Somali states) were influenced by Arab civilization.

Arab civilization early on was a typical nomadic civilization, later transitioning to a "commercial" civilization, so even the "agricultural" civilization nations East Africa destroyed were actually semi-agricultural, semi-nomadic pseudo-agricultural civilizations.

If they did not practice this pseudo-agricultural civilization, they could not cope with attacks from nomadic civilizations and primitive hunter-gatherer civilizations.

The byproduct of nomadic and hunter-gatherer civilizations is the easy emergence of "warriors," while agricultural civilizations must reach a certain level of development to achieve a "mass mobilization" mode and thus confront nomadic civilizations.

The African continent's expansive grasslands, flat terrain, and rich wildlife resources especially suit the development of nomadic and hunting modes.

Meanwhile, agricultural civilizations that do not receive prolonged nurturing are easily conquered by nomadic and primitive hunter-gatherer civilizations.

Unlike Europeans and East Africans as colonizers, through the deterrence of firearms, they established crucial conditions for the development of African agriculture.

Firstly, they directly liquidated and besieged these African tribes and kingdoms to seize land resources, and secondly, they used firearms to deal with African wildlife.

African wildlife is one of the significant obstacles to the challenging development of agriculture in Africa; huge groups of wildlife are something indigenous small villages cannot withstand.

And a large empire cannot magically appear bypassing small settlements. Thus, if today an indigenous genius cultivates local agricultural crops, they might be trampled by a large herd of zebras tomorrow.

The firearms of East Africans turned the grasslands into rivers of blood, a war targeting not only indigenous peoples but mainly the massive wild animal groups that have entangled with African natives for hundreds of thousands of years.

Today in the East African region, wild animals have been psychologically intimidated by East Africans, which provides a safe space for agricultural development.

Summarizing the factors why African agriculture did not develop, and the changes post-colonizer arrival, the phenomenon can indeed be referenced from North America.

Prior to the establishment of civilization, North America was not suited to agricultural development; the vast plains where Native Americans lived were most suitable for developing nomadic civilizations and primitive hunter-gatherer civilizations.

The transformation in North America was driven by the western world's superiority in productivity levels and forcibly distributing this technology across North America's immigrant population.

What East Africa is doing today is replicating this model in Africa, of course, Africa is after all a unique continent, so adapting to local conditions is essential, and East Africa has been undertaking numerous attempts in this regard.

The task of the National Meteorological Bureau is to study the overall climate of East Africa and thereby ensure agricultural production in various parts of East Africa, putting it in a relatively leading position from this perspective.

The world's first modern meteorological bureau was founded in the 1850s in the United Kingdom, and although East Africa's meteorological bureau was established later than those of countries like Britain, its authority, funding, and government status are relatively high.

As a continent yet to be fully explored by humans, Africa's shortcomings are glaring, with many more lessons that need to be made up, all requiring the guarantee of modern science and technology.