Chapter 798 East African Meteorological Service
As Mozambique and Angola fell into the hands of East Africa, East Africa's ambitions for the two places were no longer concealed, and various government departments and subordinate agencies in East Africa also began to station themselves in the two places under the leadership of the cabinet.
The first ones are government agencies such as the Meteorological Bureau and the Bureau of Land and Resources Survey. For the two new places, East Africa has very little limited data available.
Although Portugal has been colonizing for hundreds of years, the real effective development of Angola and Mozambique has only been in the past few years.
Wells, director of the East African National Meteorological Service, said: "Currently, there are a large number of places in Angola and Mozambique that have been without human activity for a long time, and there may even be various deserters during the war. Therefore, personnel working in both places should Distribute and carry weapons, give priority to establishing observation stations in areas already developed by the Portuguese, and pay attention to personnel safety."
During the war, a large number of black soldiers in the Portuguese army took the opportunity to flee. These black soldiers also carried modern weapons equipped by the Portuguese government, so they were very threatening.
In East Africa, the "cleansing" of the entire Angola has not yet begun, and the main force is fighting south. At this time, except for a small number of cities and important agricultural areas, there is almost no excess population.
Portuguese captives are mainly concentrated in the eastern port area and are ready to be used for handover with the Portuguese government at any time. Of course, the premise is that the Portuguese government offers the bargaining chips that East Africa wants.
The work of the East African Meteorological Bureau is to summarize the climate characteristics of Angola and Mozambique, complete the national climate map, and guide agricultural production in East Africa. This is very important for East Africa.
As a country founded on agriculture, East Africa is the first country with both agricultural and industrial civilization in the history of sub-Saharan Africa.
Agriculture contributes more than 80% to the entire national economy in East Africa, and 70% of national fiscal revenue comes from agricultural income.
Overall, the precipitation in East Africa is not as good as that in the Far Eastern Empire, but the distribution is more even, showing a symmetrical distribution characteristic of more in the middle and less in the north and south.
The typical example is the Eurasian continent. Civilization spreads mainly in the same latitude area, which is suitable for civilization exchanges. However, Africa is different. Before the industrial era, Africa was a very unsuitable area for agricultural production because the climate here is completely different from that of the Eurasian continent. different.
Among them, South Africa is a place less affected by the rain belt. It rains all year round near the Great Lakes region, and the eastern plains (including Tanzania and Mozambique) also have very abundant precipitation.
Countries that span more latitudes tend to have more complex climate conditions than countries that span more longitudes.
The seasonal changes are particularly obvious in central China (Zambia, southern Congo plateau), western Angola and the Nile Basin (South Sudan), and precipitation is similar to the changes in the monsoon climate zone of the Far Eastern Empire.
The rainy season in East Africa is mainly concentrated in the first half of the year. The Congo Basin is the center with the most rainfall on the entire African continent. The rainy season moves to the north from March to July and moves to the south after August.
In terms of temperature, East Africa is more balanced, mainly affected by terrain. High-altitude areas are often wheat growing areas, while low-altitude areas prefer rice planting. Of course, if precipitation cannot meet the requirements, drought-tolerant crops such as millet are more suitable. things.
The rest of the areas have less rainfall, the typical example is Matabele Province (Zimbabwe), but it is very suitable for agricultural development and can be compared to the North China Plain.
This important feature determines that East Africa must compile its own agricultural calendar, and as Africa is a narrowly distributed country in the north and south, this feature is even more amplified in East Africa.
Under such favorable natural conditions, one of the important reasons for the slow development of African civilization is that African nomadic civilization and hunting and gathering civilization have natural advantages over agricultural civilization.
The "powerful" African countries that were eliminated in East Africa, the Ndebele Kingdom, the Zulu Kingdom, the Boer Republic, etc. are all typical nomadic civilizations. Only the Great Lakes region has developed a relatively "developed" agricultural civilization, but the Great Lakes region, the north (South Sudan, Ethiopia) and the original East African coast (including the Sultanate of Zanzibar and the Somali countries) were all influenced by Arab civilization.
The Arab civilization was also a typical nomadic civilization in its early days, and later turned to a "commercial" civilization. Therefore, even the "agricultural" civilization countries that were eliminated in East Africa were actually only semi-agricultural, semi-nomadic pseudo-agricultural civilizations.
If they did not implement this pseudo-agricultural civilization, they would not be able to deal with the attacks of nomadic civilization and primitive hunting and gathering civilization.
ˆ The by-product of nomadic civilization and hunting and gathering civilization is that it is easy to produce "warriors", and agricultural civilization must develop to a certain extent in order to achieve the "explosion of soldiers" mode, thereby achieving confrontation with nomadic civilization.
The African continent has vast grasslands, flat terrain, and rich wildlife resources, which are especially suitable for the development of nomadic and hunting modes.
Agricultural civilization, on the other hand, could not develop for a long time and was easily conquered by nomadic and primitive hunting and gathering civilizations.
The colonists in East Africa and Europe were different. Under the threat of guns, they created important conditions for the development of agriculture in Africa.
First of all, the kingdom directly liquidated and suppressed these African tribes to seize land resources. Secondly, it used firearms to teach African wild animals a lesson.
Wild animals in Africa are one of the important obstacles to the difficult development of agriculture in Africa. The swarms of animal communities are simply not something that the indigenous forces of small settlements can resist.
And it is impossible for large empires to appear out of thin air, bypassing small settlements. So if the "genius" of the indigenous people one day develops local agricultural crops, they may be trampled by a large herd of zebras the next day.
And the East Africans’ firearms killed rivers of blood on the grasslands. This war was not only aimed at the indigenous people on the grasslands, but more importantly, it was to eliminate the large wild animal groups that had been entangled with the African indigenous people for hundreds of thousands of years.
Nowadays, the wild animals in East Africa have been killed by East Africans out of the "shadow", which also provides a safe space for the development of East African agriculture.
To summarize the various factors that led to the failure of African agriculture to develop, and why it changed after the arrival of colonists, we can actually refer to North America.
North American civilization was actually not suitable for the development of agricultural civilization before. In fact, the most suitable development for Indians on the vast plains of the United States was nomadic civilization and primitive hunting and gathering civilization.
The changes in North America are due to the Western world's superiority in productivity levels and the forcible distribution of this technology throughout North America with immigrant groups.
What East Africa is doing today is to replicate this model in Africa. Of course, Africa is a unique continent after all, so adapting measures to local conditions is essential, and East Africa has made many attempts in this regard.
The mission of the National Meteorological Administration is to study the overall climate of East Africa to ensure agricultural production in various parts of East Africa. From this point of view, East Africa is in a relatively advanced position.
The world’s first modern meteorological bureau was born in the United Kingdom in the 1850s. Meteorological bureaus in East Africa were established later than those in countries such as the United Kingdom, but their powers, funding, and status in the government are indeed relatively high.
As a continent that has not yet been fully explored by humans, Africa has outstanding shortcomings and more lessons to make up, all of which require the support of modern science and technology.
(End of this chapter)