African Entrepreneurship Records

Chapter 675 Water-Railway Combined Transport

Constantine naturally understood the little thoughts of Kagera city officials, but he did not say anything because now that he has completely put down his political affairs, it is better to leave this kind of matter to his son to worry about.

Constantine's assistant interrupted at the right time: "I will make relevant records regarding these issues and report them to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, but you should not have too much hope, because many places in East Africa are the same as Kagera. Yes, even in Central Province there are many cities queuing up.”

 The number of industrial cities in East Africa is very limited, and agricultural cities cannot be ranked. Therefore, many agricultural cities need machines and have to queue up.

But if there are dates but no dates, let’s hit two poles first. What if it’s done? After all, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince cannot possibly choose to turn a blind eye to local demands!

"We in Kagera City are also aware of the current difficulties in the country, so we are thinking about whether we can order related equipment from overseas. However, there is no precedent for this situation in East Africa, so we have to ask." Kagera City Chang said.

East Africa’s industrial production capacity is limited, so you can look to European and American countries, especially Germany and Austria, which are both good at agricultural product processing machinery.

“Is your city’s finances sufficient?”

 As an agricultural city, Kagera City’s finances should not be very abundant, if this is the case according to general logic.

  However, as an early key development area in East Africa, the Great Lakes Region has one data advantage over other places in East Africa, and that is its large population.

 The entire Great Lakes region, including the Western and Northern Great Lakes provinces alone, has a population of more than three million (excluding black people). Therefore, in terms of population density, the Great Lakes region can be compared with the eastern coastal plain.

With a large population, even if the per capita output value is low, it can still accumulate a relatively considerable figure. Therefore, although it is an agricultural city and a prefecture-level city that mainly grows food, the fiscal revenue of Kagera City is higher than that of some ordinary industrial cities. .

“Our city was indeed financially tight in the past few years due to the construction of water conservancy projects, but now the project is in the final stage, so starting next year, more funds can be used to develop other industries.”

 Because the Great Lakes region is an important food production base in East Africa, water conservancy project construction in this region was also the first to be carried out. In addition, East Africa has been transforming the local environment before, so the current water conservancy project construction in Kagera City is already a project that is about to be completed.

At the same time as the project was completed, the agriculture in Kagera City had already reaped dividends a few years ago, the most obvious one being the newly opened tracts of farmland.

 At present, international grain prices remain at a low level, but they are better than in the 1970s. Grain prices have already rebounded in the late 1970s.

On the one hand, the United States, Tsarist Russia and other countries have reduced production, and on the other hand, domestic engineering construction and population growth in East Africa have absorbed a large part of the production.

However, when food prices plummeted, those who suffered the most were not these important food exporting countries, but the Far Eastern Empire, which was thousands of miles away.

At the time when the last economic crisis broke out, the northern part of the Far Eastern Empire also suffered major disasters. Drought and famine affected thirteen provinces and affected millions of people.

Although it suffered heavy losses, the situation in the Far Eastern Empire in this time and space was still better, because East Africa had absorbed a large population before, and the disaster did not reach tens of millions like in the previous life.

 The famine that spread to the entire northern Far Eastern Empire also contributed to a new high in East Africa’s grain exports to the Far Eastern Empire in the 1970s. In the era of agricultural crisis, it could barely recover a little of the cost.

 Because of the Huaihai Economic Zone, the Far Eastern Empire developed some industries and minerals in the north, which naturally made East Africa cheaper. In fact, these were coal mines and textiles.

 The more important thing is the loan business, but it is limited to the Huaihai Economic Zone. After all, unlike armed colonization, East Africa does not have as much say in the Far East Empire as countries such as Britain and France.

"Since five years ago, many places in East Africa have begun to transform into growing cash crops, and food crops have become more concentrated in several important food production bases. It is against this background that our city of Kagera has continued to expand its farmland area." Agricultural production in East Africa is becoming more and more standardized, and various regions are planting more suitable crops according to local conditions. The rice planting area in the Great Lakes region is far behind the eastern coastal plain, which also means that the future development of this region will be limited.

Grain farming is a relatively unpromising career. This will become more and more common. However, the future development of the Great Lakes region should not be too bad. Although Kagera is not rich in resources, the resource potential of the two Great Lakes provinces is very considerable. Especially in the western region, close to the province of Hesse.

 …

 Bujumbura City, capital of Western Great Lakes Province.

After leaving Kagera City, Constantine’s next stop was Bujumbura. As the provincial capital, Bujumbura is relatively remote relative to the entire Western Great Lakes Province, directly in the southwest of the Western Great Lakes Province. .

However, there is a natural reason for choosing this place as the capital of Western Great Lakes Province, which can be seen from the name of Western Great Lakes Province.

The name of Western Great Lakes Province naturally means west of the Great Lake (Lake Victoria), but Bujumbura does belong to the Lake Solon (Lake Tanganyika) basin.

 The three major lakes in East Africa, namely the Great Lakes, Lake Solon and Lake Malawi, are not far away from each other on the map, and are distributed in order from north to south.

Given this distance, the East African government has naturally considered the idea of ​​opening up shipping between the three Great Lakes. In fact, it is possible to build canals to connect the rivers in the three Great Lakes basins.

 However, this is currently impossible to achieve in East Africa, mainly due to technical and efficiency issues.

 For example, the Great Lakes and Lake Solon are the most likely to achieve this. The largest water source of the Great Lakes, the navigable channel of the Kagera River is less than 70 kilometers away from Lake Solon.

 The alternative to this plan is the Mbu Railway (Mwanza to Bujumbura).

"The Mbu Railway passes through the Kagera River, and the navigation capacity of the upper reaches of the Kagera River is too poor. The terrain is mainly mountainous and hilly. This is almost the common point of the major rivers in East Africa. Therefore, considering all factors, we only We can choose water-rail combined transportation to solve the problem of cargo transportation from Solon Lake to the Great Lakes.”

“This is not just our own problem in the Western Great Lakes Province, but also involves the transportation problem between the northern industrial belt and the three central provinces.”

“The closest distance from the three central provinces to the northern industrial belt is obviously a diagonal line on the map, but this diagonal line passes through mountains, rivers, and most importantly, through Lake Solon and the Great Lakes.”

"We know that the depth of Lake Solon reaches hundreds of meters, which means that it is impossible to cross it through bridges and other means. Even if technology develops, it will not be possible in the next hundred years. The area of ​​​​the lake is too large, let alone Maybe building a bridge, the amount of work would be a cross-border project in Europe, and it would be better to build a long road along the lake shore."

“That is essentially a detour, so the last resort is to avoid water transportation. This is also the goal we strive for in Bujumbura City, to become a bridge between the economic circle along Lake Solon and the future economic circle along the Great Lakes.”

“Now we have achieved our initial goal, which is to set up a station upstream of the Kagera River channel, so that in only half an hour, goods from Bujumbura can be transferred to water transportation in our province through the Mbu Railway. , and finally arrived in Kisumu City, and we cannot complete this transportation line alone. The best way is to form a city similar to ours in Bujumbura on the south bank of Lake Solon to connect the three central provinces."

In this regard, East Africa is much less fortunate than the United States. The five Great Lakes in the United States are surrounded by plains, while the terrain between the three Great Lakes in East Africa is much more complex, making it impossible for shipping in East Africa to connect into a network.

 (End of this chapter)