According to this reasoning, East Africa is a pseudo-power, which can be counted as a great power in front of ordinary countries, but not in the face of the above countries.

This state is similar to the Far Eastern Empire in the previous life, in fact, the Far Eastern Empire and the United States can be regarded as a new confrontation between the two superpowers, which can be regarded as a unique country, but the Far Eastern Empire has some indicators that do not meet the standard.

……

December 3, 1879.

"Your Highness, according to our archives, the total number of immigrants to East Africa is more than fourteen,600,000,000, and the number of blacks and registered slaves is more than thirteen million."

"These are only part of the records in the archives, and they can be used as reference data for the population of East Africa, of course, there are big discrepancies with the actual population data of East Africa, such as the number of new births and the population lost by disease and war, which are not counted."

"And there are still a lot of discrepancies caused by missing and incorrect records, after all, some of the archives are damaged for various reasons because they are old, which makes our work more difficult."

Ernst thus had a general idea of the population of East Africa, and the number of immigrants alone reached about fifteen million, which would have doubled or tripled in the end, without counting blacks, to about 30 million to 40 million.

As for the number of blacks, we should not ignore it, a few years ago, the number of blacks counted was 22 million, and East Africa has sent out almost 3 million in recent years, so the current number of blacks in East Africa should be close to 20 million and less than 20 million.

Among the less than 20 million blacks, there are 13 million registered black "laborers" in East Africa, further illustrating the nature of the slave empire in East Africa.

Ernst asked, "When will your statistics be completed?" ”

"It will almost have to wait until March next year, after all, the amount of this project is still quite large, and we need the cooperation of governments at all levels, and at the same time, we need a lot of calculations and reviews to finally get the results." Von der Leyen said.

Demographics are not an easy task, like the population data provided by von der Leyen to Ernst before, but it is the easiest to obtain, after all, how many immigrants have come to East Africa, and how many slaves have been recruited and sold in East Africa, East Africa is registered.

This is the same as settling accounts, East Africa also has an account book, and there is a rough calculation of the population of East Africa, after all, the number of immigrants and slaves is fixed, so every time East Africa has how many immigrants are in the account, it will be added to the total number in time.

However, this method can only count the number of immigrants who come to East Africa, and it is not clear after coming to East Africa, after all, immigrating to East Africa is risky, and there are not a few people who die unexpectedly due to various reasons such as water and soil adaptation and disease after arriving in East Africa.

"Well, you don't need to be in a hurry in your work, but you must be accurate, especially when counting the population, and you must strictly prevent some people from playing tricks to hide the population." Ernst emphasized.

In a country like East Africa, it is not impossible to have a hidden population, the hidden population is actually a black household, in fact, the largest number of black households may be blacks, East Africa is a slave country, enjoying the benefits brought by slavery, it is inevitable that some places for the sake of local development, or lazy, secretly increase the number of slaves, these slaves are not officially recognized by East Africa as "laborers", which is illegal.

"Well, this matter, our Highness will pay attention to it."

Ernst took a sip of tea and said: "Don't worry about offending people, if it's black, it doesn't mean a big problem, but for the sake of fairness, those black people who are hiding will be redistributed by the government." ”

This is the difference between the local government and the central government, where the local government makes some outrageous moves in order to fulfill its tasks and its own interests, and the central government has to crack down on this phenomenon.

However, Ernst was more tolerant of the local government's attitude towards hiding more black slaves, and could not blame the past, because blacks had no human rights and could only consider themselves unlucky.

"How far has the drought got?" Ernst then asked.

"The current drought in the eastern coastal plain is within our control, that is, the situation in the plateau dryland agricultural production areas is not very good, but because the drought-tolerant crops are mainly grown, the situation is not too bad."

Von der Leyen continued: "In the grain-producing areas of the coastal plains, because of the construction of water conservancy facilities in recent years, the reservoirs and irrigation systems we have built have played a huge role in fighting drought, but fortunately we have filled up the large and small reservoirs with water during the long rainy season, so we can now ensure agricultural irrigation in time." ”

"But because the long rainy season is followed by the dry season, we also have a demand for water, and the dry season after the long rainy season lasts for about four to five months, during which the reservoir has been in a state of water release, and the reservoir capacity has been reduced by about 20 percent."

"When the light rainy season comes, the reservoir will only have 60 to 70 percent of its capacity due to water use and loss, after all, this drought situation is special, so it has brought some pressure to our work, but as long as we stick to it until March next year, the situation should be greatly eased."

"As for the grain producing areas on the plateau, the biggest problem is that the water conservancy construction has led to some confusion, so the situation is worse than that of the coastal plains."

The construction of water conservancy projects will inevitably affect the original natural form and have a certain impact on wetland ecosystems such as rivers and lakes, which is also the reason why the problem of grain producing areas in the plateau is greater than that in the eastern coastal plain.

However, to transform the environment of East Africa, it is natural that we can't care too much about the gains and losses in some details, if it is set in stone, then there is no need for human society to exist, it is better to return to the tree as a monkey.

So Ernst said to his subordinates: "The water conservancy construction will definitely have a certain negative impact on us in the short term, but once it is completed, the overall benefit is what I really value, so the water conservancy construction should be steadily promoted, which may even affect the development of East African agriculture in the next hundred years." ”

Von der Leyen felt a little inexplicable about Ernst's words, water conservancy construction is naturally a good thing, but how to listen to His Royal Highness's meaning is still a disadvantage.

After all, it is not an era of thinking about problems, Ernst's idea of considering environmental issues, in the 19th century, it is naturally a little out of place, the 19th century human beings are quite confident, the belief that "man will conquer the sky" is firmly imprinted in the mind, this is the industrial revolution on the human thinking of a huge impact.

In fact, in the 20th century, human beings began to think about how to live in harmony with nature, because conquering nature is an unattainable thing, and it is useless to believe that "man will conquer heaven", and the more science and technology develop, the more human beings have the opportunity to discover their own insignificance in front of nature.

But in the 21st century, there has been a fallacy of "environmentalism", of course, Ernst referring to extreme environmentalism, which used to be a belief in science, and many people in the 21st century have begun to question science.

Therefore, social thinking will conform to the development of the times, and the human mind is not as strong as imagined, and the society as a whole is prone to go to extremes when it encounters a slight setback.

The 19th century was an era of great development, at least the Western world human beings were psychologically satisfied, confident and optimistic, so it was easy to ignore some problems and drawbacks in the future, and Ernst wanted to fill in the gaps in East Africa in this era.

(End of chapter)