African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1228 Inland Water Transport - Port Bell

While the immigration project was being carried out in the northeast of the Great Lakes region, the cities along the Great Lakes, especially the port cities, were not idle.

Let's turn our attention to the cities of Kampala and Entebbe in April 1916.

Kampala is now the capital of the Northern Great Lakes Province in East Africa, while Entebbe was the capital of the former Buganda Kingdom. It is now the second largest city in the Northern Great Lakes Province in East Africa, only more than 20 kilometers away from Kampala.

As for the third largest city in the Northern Great Lakes Province, it is not on the shore of the Great Lakes, but on the shore of Lake Albert in the previous life. There are many cities in the Northern Great Lakes Province, except for the most famous Lake Victoria, Lake Albert, Lake Kyoga, Lake Wamala, etc. in the previous life. They are all large lakes that can be ranked in the world based on the water area alone.

It's just that they seem a little mediocre in front of the many outstanding giant lakes in the East African Great Lakes.

Therefore, the Northern Great Lakes Province, with Uganda as its core in the past, is definitely the "land of fish and rice" in East Africa. Lakes, rivers, plains, hills and mountains complement each other. In the farming era, there is no better land than here.

The two cities of Kampala and Entebbe are located on this fertile and rich land.

Take Kampala City as an example. In the past, Uganda was called the Pearl on the East African Plateau by the British, and Kampala was called the "Pearl among Pearls".

Although the value of the pearl has depreciated seriously because the British said too much, the double certification can also prove the high hopes that the British have for the land of Uganda.

In fact, if we look at the historical origins, Kampala was once the capital of the Buganda Kingdom. After all, Kampala and Entebbe are very close.

Kampala City, Bell Port.

Engineer of the East African Neihu Port Research Institute, Robcotts, is directing workers to transform Bell Port.

This middle-aged man, who has more than 20 years of experience in port construction and renovation in East Africa, guided the various persons in charge of the construction site with drawings.

"The full renovation of Bell Port must be completed before July next year. Before the Xingguo Reservoir starts to store water, the silt outside the original port area should be cleaned up."

"So everyone should take positive action. This is a big project. The coordination of excavators and earthmovers should be done well. First, the silt and dry soil on the bottom of the lake and along the coast should be cleaned out."

Bell Port is the name of the port in Kampala, which is only about ten kilometers away from the city of Kampala.

The construction of the Xingguo Reservoir will inevitably lead to the rise of the water level of the original large lake. In this way, many large lake ports in East Africa will be affected, and even some small fishing ports in the northeast may be submerged by the lake.

Therefore, the renovation of Bell Port is on the one hand a need for the growth of freight logistics in Kampala, and on the other hand to cope with the water level changes after the construction of the Xingguo Reservoir.

Robkets went on to say: "To summarize the preliminary work, it is to dig deeper, widen, and expand, and create the prototype of the future Port Bell, so as to build it into an excellent deep-water port along the Great Lakes."

"In addition, the port will add advanced equipment such as container cranes to transform the port into a containerized logistics system. In this way, the logistics efficiency of Port Bell will be greatly increased."

"To enhance Kampala's status as a core transportation hub in the Great Lakes region, the last construction of Port Bell was in 1898, and now Port Bell is far from meeting the logistics and shipping needs of Kampala."

"After all, in the last century, we could not have imagined that the East African economy would grow so much today." Fast, and the logistics system will experience container revolution. "

"Nowadays, most of the domestic ports have reached the point where they must be transformed to adapt to the changes in technology and social production in the new era." "According to the instructions of the provincial government, this round of expansion of Bell Port must be carried out in accordance with the highest standards to ensure that the normal operation of the port can be maintained in the future and even in the next 30 years."

Here we can see the ambition of the East African government. The Great Lakes (Lake Victoria) has always been the most developed area of ​​water transportation in East Africa, and the development of the economic belt along the lake is obviously centered on the Great Lakes, and the coastal cities are closely linked together through water transportation.

And port construction is the most important part of it. Taking advantage of the opportunity of the construction of the Xingguo Reservoir, the water level of the Great Lakes will rise, and the water level of the entire Great Lakes will rise by two to three meters, which will further strengthen the shipping conditions in the Great Lakes region.

Of course, the disadvantage of the Great Lakes region is also obvious, that is, there is no direct outlet to the sea, and it is necessary to go to the sea from Mombasa by rail.

This is obviously also in the calculation of the East African government, that is, the national canal plan. In the national canal plan, the connection between the Great Lake (Lake Victoria) and Lake Solon (Lake Tanganyika) water networks has been opened up, and the artificial waterway to the east of Lake Solon can directly reach the eastern coast of East Africa.

Although it is a big detour, this also means that ships from the Great Lakes can reach the Indian Ocean unimpeded.

In fact, with the help of the national canal system, ships in the Great Lakes region can also reach the Atlantic Ocean in the future.

There is no doubt that the national canal plan in East Africa is a very crazy project, and the cost of completing this project is that after 1915, there were only more than 800,000 black slaves left in East Africa, and millions of black slaves died for the canal plan in East Africa. Counting the early East African Grand Canal plan and the construction of national water conservancy projects in East Africa, "maybe" nearly five million black people paid the price of their lives for water conservancy construction in East Africa.

In fact, the official statistics of East Africa are about 2.6 million, but in order to complete the progress and execution differences, the number should be far higher than the official statistics of East Africa.

From this aspect alone, Ernst's "great achievements" are no longer what Emperor Yang of Sui can evaluate, but "the disciple is better than the master", and this achievement can only be compared with Leopold II in the previous life and the Americans, Portuguese, French, Spanish, British... .

It seems that there are few innocent people in the great powers and many European countries.

In this time and space, Leopold II has no room for operation, but there should be millions of natives who died at his hands. As for the Americans, Ernst is still relatively worse. After all, there are almost no Indians in the entire United States. Naturally, there is no need to say more about other powers. Without tens of thousands of lives, it is impossible to become an industrial power in the 19th century.

Moreover, the nature of Ernst is somewhat different from them. Leopold II and the Americans and other powers are "massacres" in the true sense, while East Africa is "just" normal engineering losses.

Even if these projects were not carried out by black slaves, the East Africans would certainly suffer huge losses. This is the price of development, so there is no problem with "normal" losses, but someone in East Africa has borne these costs on behalf of the citizens of East Africa.

However, East Africa is now "reaping the fruits of its own labor". After using the black slaves, the projects in East Africa can basically only be borne by its own citizens.

However, the difference is still very large. There is no need to say more about the treatment. The engineering team under Robcotts can be said to be very well-equipped, with excavators, bulldozers, cranes, and transport vehicles.

And these heavy engineering equipment that have emerged in recent years are also the real confidence of East Africa to completely eliminate black slaves during the "Fourth Five-Year Plan".

With the development of the automobile and machinery industries, coupled with Ernst's guidance in the general direction, and the unremitting efforts of East African researchers, many engineering equipment in the previous life naturally appeared in the world earlier.

Take the excavator for example. As early as the end of the last century, Ernst had already begun to develop hydraulic excavators. After nearly 20 years of hard work, hydraulic excavators have finally been mass-produced and used in actual production.

The emergence of this small piece of engineering machinery alone can be said to be a complete technological revolution in engineering construction. At least in Ernst's opinion, its importance is no less than the changes in internal combustion engines, electricity and other technologies.