East African Military Industrial Development

February 3, 1888.

Constantin inspected the Mbeya city arsenal, observing the development of East African military industry. The Mbeya city arsenal was an advanced representative of East Africa's independent military industry and had been one of East Africa's most important military construction units since the late 1860s.

The senior staff of the Mbeya city arsenal led Constantin through the various weapons production workshops. Among them, the artillery production workshop remained one of the places that interested this former continental European general most.

"We improved the French 1807 75mm Field Gun, effectively resolving its recoil issues while greatly strengthening the Army's firepower. So far, the entire military has equipped 378 guns. They form an important part of mobile land-support artillery, with annual production maintained at around thirty guns," the director of the Mbeya city arsenal introduced to the king.

"Over the past three years, our factory has also produced 120mm Heavy Artillery through cooperation with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, it has few practical applications, and only forty-nine guns have been produced in total."

"We independently developed the Type 1883 Grenade Launcher, with more than two thousand produced in total, and have copied more than 130 Maxim machine guns."

East Africa was not a country that strictly enforced patent laws, so it mainly copied the Maxim machine gun directly. This had much to do with East Africa's national conditions.

Even the currently most open coastal regions of East Africa remained only semi-open markets, while the inland regions were basically closed. Therefore, patents had no effect inland.

This was also a problem for East Africa in attracting investment. Trading its market for technology was fundamentally impossible to achieve. Maxim certainly would not come to East Africa to invest in and build factories; after all, East Africa currently placed little importance on intellectual property