Chapter 582 Geographical Boundary

While Waltz and Mori were talking, vehicles of all sizes were coming in and out of the Dar es Salaam State Cable Factory. At this time, most of the vehicles were powered by human and animal power, and they could not carry much cargo at a time.

Fortunately, the Dar es Salaam Railway Station is not far from the Dar es Salaam State Cable Factory No. 1, so both purchasing and shipping are easy. The real difficulty lies in the origin of the raw materials.

The copper and rubber of Dar es Salaam's State Cable Factory come from inland areas, mainly from the three provinces of Hohenzollern, Swabia and Hesse. As for coal, it can get quotas from the city.

Both the Hohenzollern and Swabian provinces have railways, but the situation in Hesse is very different. Hesse is also located on the west side of the Mitumba Mountains and the eastern edge of the Congo Basin. The terrain difference is relatively large, and transportation is not very convenient.

Therefore, as the main rubber producing area in East Africa, Hesse Province is very inconvenient to transport rubber after harvesting. Hesse Province is also a resource-rich province in East Africa, with a large number of mineral resources, such as copper, coal, iron, tungsten, etc. At the same time, the area is also one of the most important forestry provinces in East Africa, backed by the Congo rainforest and the Mitumba Mountains, and has abundant forestry resources.

There are not many resource-based provinces that can currently stabilize Hesse, namely Hechingen (formerly Transvaal), Matabele (Zimbabwe), Southern Frontier (southern Transvaal and the former Zulu Kingdom and Swaziland), Nile Province (South Sudan), New Baden (Botswana), Hohenzollern (Zambia), and Swabia (Southern Congo Plateau).

Among them, Hechingen Province and Matabele Province are unique, and their mineral resources are comparable to those of most countries in the world.

For example, if the Hechingen Province were regarded as a country, its mineral value would have ranked among the top ten in the world in the past. In the past, most of South Africa's minerals were concentrated in this area, and South Africa was the fifth largest mineral country in the world.

There is no need to say much about Matabele Province. Although the Zimbabwean currency is very famous, Zimbabwe's industry is relatively developed in Africa, and Zimbabwe is still a landlocked country. So why this result occurred is naturally inseparable from Zimbabwe's rich mineral resources.

In fact, the situation was the same in Hechingen Province in its previous life. Johannesburg, the most economically developed city in South Africa, was located in Hechingen Province. However, because Ernst did not develop Hechingen Province, there was no city of Johannesburg in East Africa.

After all, Johannesburg’s prosperity in the past was due to gold mines. The gold mines in South Africa are too dazzling, and East Africa does not want to get into trouble because of this.

These resource-rich provinces, together with the provinces with relatively rich mineral resources such as South Salzburg, New Württemberg, Lorraine, etc.

It can be seen that the top ten provinces in East Africa in terms of mineral resource value are basically distributed in the central and southern parts of East Africa. The only province in the north is the Nile Province (South Sudan), mainly because of oil.

The northern part of East Africa is mainly divided by the plateau. The East African Plateau and the area north of the South African Plateau belong to the north, including the Northern Province, Juba Province, Turkana Province, Nile Province, New Bavaria Province, East Azande Province, and most of the Congo rainforest (Somalia in the previous life, southern Ethiopia, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, most of Congo, etc.).

The two major plateau areas north of the Zambezi River, the East African Plateau and the Katanga Plateau, are collectively called the Central Plateau in East Africa. They are the central region of East Africa, including the eastern coastal plains (Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, southern Congo, etc. in the past).

The provinces south of the Zambezi River are in the south of East Africa, which is a way of dividing the geography of East Africa.

Among them, plateau is an important dividing criterion, and the Zambezi River is an important geographical symbol for dividing the plateau, because there is actually not much difference between the two sides of the Zambezi River. It is not a geographical dividing line like the Huai River where the climatic characteristics on both sides are obviously different.

Of course, there is also a very commonly used geographical division standard in East Africa, which is mainly based on the level of economic development and development.

According to this standard, East Africa is divided into five parts: East, Inland, West, South and North.

According to this standard, the eastern region is widely distributed. The area east of the Great Rift Valley, mainly the Nile River, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi, is the eastern part of East Africa. It generally refers to the area in East Africa that was developed earlier, has a dense population and a more developed economy.

According to this standard, Somalia is considered to be in the East, but Somalia is also in the North. However, there is no need to worry about this. The local Somalis will definitely identify more with the East because the East represents more development in East Africa.

The inland mainly refers to the four provinces that are being developed: Hohenzollern, Hesse, Swabia, and Matabele, which is the area in the geographical center of East Africa.

The scope of the south has been narrowed a lot, mainly including South Africa and Botswana in the previous life.

The northern boundary is vague, but it generally refers to the provinces where tropical deserts and tropical savannas meet, but the Congo rainforest is not included.

The western part consists of several provinces and regions that have basically not been developed. It is also the most underdeveloped and least suitable area for living in East Africa, mainly Namibia in the previous life.

No matter which of the above two geographical division standards is used, the province of Hesse belongs to the central region. Of course, people in the eastern region can call the west the West. This is the same as the people in the northeast of the Far East Empire calling the area south of Shanhaiguan the South.

Hesse is an important resource-rich province in East Africa. Its most important industry at present is the rubber industry. However, due to various reasons, transportation in Hesse is very inconvenient.

This increases the cost of production for East Africa's power industry and other industries, such as tires for bicycles and carriages.

If you want to transport rubber out of Hesse, you can basically only rely on the so-called "roads" in Hesse. The roads in other parts of East Africa are easier to deal with.

Not only is the terrain in Hesse relatively rugged, but there is also a lot of rainfall, so the road conditions there are 100% certain to be among the worst in all of East Africa.

Of course, although the road conditions in Hesse are poor, they are not as bad as in Africa in the previous life. Because of the East African government, its roads are effectively maintained every year.

However, this is also very time-consuming and labor-intensive. The province of Hesse basically has to maintain the roads at regular intervals, which can be as short as two or three days, or as long as a week. The roads need to be repaired because when it rains heavily, horse-drawn carriages will leave deep tire marks when passing over them. If several vehicles pass through them, deep pits of water will form.

The most worry-free way to solve the road problems in Hesse in the future is to harden the roads in Hesse. This is relatively easy to solve, which is to use cement to rebuild the roads in Hesse.

However, East Africa has a large cement gap. In recent years, the government has invested in other projects, and the consumption of cement has always been in short supply, so the road hardening plan in Hesse has not been implemented.

However, with the development of industries such as electricity, the demand for the rubber industry has increased greatly, and the poor transportation conditions in Hesse must be improved.

In the past, the advantage of most of the major rubber producing countries was that they were close to the ocean and had convenient sea transportation, while the main rubber producing areas in East Africa are located inland, so the inland transportation in Hesse must be improved. Otherwise, the rubber produced in East Africa may not be able to compete with other major rubber producing areas in the world, after all, there is an additional transportation cost.

Ernst does not expect East African rubber to be cheaper than Southeast Asia and Brazil, but domestic use in East Africa is definitely cheaper than imports. Of course, the rubber industry has always been profitable, and the demand for rubber is increasing every year, so the possibility of losses is very small.

(End of this chapter)