African Entrepreneurship Record

April 1879.

Western Great Lakes Province, Bujumbura City.

As the capital of Western Great Lakes Province, Bujumbura is built on the shores of Lake Solon (Tanganyika). March and April coincide with the onset of the long rainy season.

This year's rain has come very quickly. The annual precipitation in Bujumbura City usually ranges from 800mm to 1000mm, but this year it has exceeded 2000mm, and even exceeded 3000mm in some areas. Most of the raging river water is discharged along the river into Lake Solon. But there are still many areas where the river water cannot outpace the collection speed of rainwater, flooding large areas of farmland on both sides of the river.

This made Najin, a senior official of West Great Lakes Province, very worried. He frowned and said: "The rainfall in West Great Lakes Province this year is a bit excessive. We have received reports from many places. In the area close to Hesse Province in the west, the rainfall is even It once reached 130 millimeters a day, and precipitation in most areas of the province has exceeded the peak. This year's grain production plan in the province may be greatly damaged."

Western Great Lakes Province consists of the former Burundi, all of Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and parts of Congo. Therefore, the flood disaster in Western Great Lakes Province affected a wide range. Bujumbura, the provincial capital, was not seriously affected. Other areas, especially rainy areas, were not seriously affected. Suffered greater losses.

However, Bujumbura is not serious. It is also for other places in the Western Great Lakes Region. Bujumbura is actually located in an area that usually has less rain. Now even Bujumbura has suffered. disaster, the situation in other areas can be imagined.

"Senior Official, there is nothing we can do about this. Natural disasters are uncontrollable. We can only try our best to recover the losses and dredge rivers across the province to prevent floods from flooding more farmland. We should also start implementing rescue and disaster relief in the province." the assistant said.

The assistant's words brought Na Jin's thinking back to solving the problem. He smiled bitterly and said: "Yes! Now is not the time to complain. You should immediately organize people to make statistics on this disaster. Grain depots in various places are prepared to provide disaster relief at any time. The health department should not take it lightly. As the saying goes, a major epidemic will follow a major disaster. Do a good job in disinfection..."

Najin arranged the disaster relief tasks in an orderly manner. As a province with abundant rainfall, West Great Lakes Province will encounter this kind of abnormal increase in rainfall every few years, so it has seen more and has richer experience in dealing with it.

Correspondingly, the provinces surrounding the Great Lakes Region such as North Lakes Province, South Prussia, and Plateau Province were also affected by this heavy rain. However, heavy rainfall in these areas is not a bad thing, especially in Plateau Province, which usually has less precipitation. Now that the floods have come, the animals on the Galenseti grassland are living a more prosperous life.

The entire Great Lakes region was affected by the disaster, and a reduction in grain production this year became inevitable. The news was quickly uploaded to the central government.

Ernst: "The Great Lakes region is the second largest grain production base in East Africa. The disaster in the Great Lakes region will have a great impact on national grain production this year. It seems that we need to speed up the engineering transformation of the Great Lakes region."

In recent years, due to the construction of water conservancy projects in the coastal plain areas, especially in the Central Province, many water conservancy projects have been built, including excavation of canals, renovation of farmland irrigation systems, river management, construction of reservoirs, etc., which have greatly stabilized and improved the coastal plain areas. Grain output has been able to maintain harvests despite droughts and floods, surpassing the Great Lakes region and returning to the first position.

Constantine: "Are you going to put the same set of measures you used on the coast in the Great Lakes region?"

Ernst: "The natural conditions of the Great Lakes Region are much stronger than those of the coastal plains, and even better than those of France. What is lacking is just infrastructure, otherwise the level of agricultural development in the Great Lakes Region should exceed that of France."

When it comes to agriculture, France is really far ahead. Although the United States is also very strong, the agriculture in the United States is very rough and relies more on the accumulation of huge arable land. According to the average level, France is better, especially in The cultivated land in France was not snatched from the Indians like in the United States, and the living standards of French farmers are generally relatively high.

The land in East Africa has the same origins as the United States, and its agricultural development is not as good as the two. Fortunately, East Africa has the advantage of being located in the tropics, which has made East Africa's tropical agricultural economy developed, avoiding competition with many temperate countries, and being able to compete with East Africa. It's nothing more than Brazil and Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is not developed at all now, and Brazil is relatively turbulent and chaotic, not as politically stable as East Africa.

Of course, Brazil's first-mover advantage cannot be ignored, but East Africa is rapidly erasing Brazil's first-mover advantage, and the way East Africa narrows the gap is to build water conservancy projects.

Water conservancy projects can be large or small. East Africa can solve this problem according to its own needs. While Brazil may be able to handle small-scale water conservancy projects, its capacity for large-scale water conservancy projects is far inferior to that of East Africa. After all, the Brazilian government is not as strong as the East African government, so large-scale water conservancy projects cannot be avoided. It would be too difficult for the big landowners to occupy land and let the Brazilian government bribe them.

Ernst said to Constantine: "The government has nothing big to do now, and many inland areas have not been developed, so this time we simply follow the coastal plain water conservancy project construction model and overhaul water conservancy projects across the country."

Constantine thought for a moment and said, "This project is quite large!"

Ernst: "Father, it doesn't matter. I don't want to finish it all at once. After all, the level of development in Africa is too low. Among the continents in the world, I am afraid it is only a little better than Oceania. The black people we have now are relatively small." If we have sufficient resources, we need to carry out more large-scale projects to narrow the gap with other continents."

It can be said that most areas in East Africa entered agricultural society for the first time after being integrated into East Africa. Many places can be said to maintain the original appearance of the earth. Therefore, East Africa faces difficulties in developing land. Very difficult.

However, the natural conditions in East Africa are relatively good. As long as these lands are developed, they can produce good agricultural returns, so Ernst thinks it is a very profitable business.

However, if East Africa wants to catch up with those areas that have developed for thousands or hundreds of years in a short period of time, it must make huge sacrifices. Fortunately, there are a large number of black people in East Africa. East Africa can pass these negative factors on to the black people. If not for Enns Coming from a later generation, Ernst knew that colonization would come back to bite him, and Ernst really wanted to keep these black people as objects of exploitation.

Constantine: "Okay, now that you've decided, let's implement it!"

Ernst nodded, and then went to arrange the matter. With experience in coastal water conservancy projects, Ernst directly asked the two big brothers of Germany and Austria for help this time.

Residential construction and water conservancy projects also require professional talents. This time Ernst planned to build water conservancy projects across the country, and the talent gap needed was not small, so he simply borrowed some people from Germany and Austria to guide the construction of water conservancy projects across East Africa.

In response to East Africa's request for help, the German and Austrian governments directly agreed. Borrowing some manpower was not a big problem, just treating East Africa as a favor.

Therefore, with the liaison between the two governments, East Africa invited more than 200 water conservancy technical experts from the two countries at once to come to East Africa to guide the construction of water conservancy projects.

For this water conservancy project construction, Ernst planned to directly launch a saturation attack. In twenty years, he would complete the path that other countries had taken for hundreds of years and pave the way for agricultural development in East Africa.