Chapter 675 Water-Rail Transport

Constantine naturally understood the little thoughts of the officials in Kagera City, but he did not say anything, because now he has completely put aside government affairs, and it is better to let his son worry about such matters.

Constantine's assistant interrupted at the right time and said, "I will keep relevant records of these issues and report them to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, but you should not hold out too much hope, because many places in East Africa are the same as Kagera City. Even in the Central Province, there are many cities waiting in line."

The number of industrial cities in East Africa is very limited, and agricultural cities are not on the list, so many agricultural cities that need machines have to queue up.

But whether there is a date or not, let's try it first, what if it works? After all, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince can't just turn a blind eye to the demands of the local government!

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

East Africa's industrial capacity is limited, so it can turn its attention to European and American countries, especially Germany and Austria, which are both good in the field of agricultural product processing machinery.

“Does your city have enough finances?”

As an agricultural city, Kagera's finances should not be very abundant, according to general logic.

However, as an early key development area in East Africa, the Great Lakes region has one advantage over other places in East Africa: its large population.

In the entire Great Lakes region, the population of the Western Great Lakes Province and the Northern Great Lakes Province alone exceeds three million (excluding blacks), so in terms of population density, the Great Lakes region can be compared with the eastern coastal plains.

With a large population, even if the per capita output value is low, a relatively impressive figure can be accumulated. Therefore, although it is an agricultural city and a prefecture-level city mainly engaged in grain planting, Kagera's fiscal revenue is higher than that of some ordinary industrial cities.

"Our city was indeed financially tight a few years ago because of the water conservancy construction, but now the project is in the final stage, so starting next year, we can use more funds to develop other industries."

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

When the project was completed, agriculture in Kagera City had already reaped the benefits several years ago. The most obvious benefit was the newly opened farmland.

Currently, international food prices remain at a low level, but it is better than in the 1970s, when food prices had already rebounded.

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

However, the biggest losers from the plummeting grain prices were not these important grain exporting countries, but rather the Far Eastern Empire thousands of miles away.

Coincidentally, around the time of the last economic crisis, the northern part of the Far Eastern Empire also suffered a major disaster, with drought and famine affecting thirteen provinces and affecting millions of people.

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

The famine that affected the entire northern part of the Far Eastern Empire also led to a new high in East Africa's grain exports to the Far Eastern Empire in 70 years, barely recovering some of the costs during the agricultural crisis.

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

The more important business 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 as Britain, France and other countries in front of the Far East Empire.

"Five years ago, many places in East Africa have begun to transform into growing cash crops, and food crops have gathered in several important food production bases. It is against this background that Kagera City has been expanding its farmland area."

Agricultural production in East Africa is becoming more and more standardized, and local areas are planting suitable crops in accordance with local conditions. The rice planting area in the Great Lakes region has even surpassed that of the eastern coastal plains, which also means that the region's development will be limited in the future.

There is more and more consensus that grain farming is a career with no future, but the future development of the Great Lakes region should not be too bad. Although Kagera's resources are not abundant, the resource potential of the two Great Lakes provinces is considerable, especially the western region close to Hesse.

…

Bujumbura, the capital of Western Great Lakes Province.

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

However, there is a 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 largest lakes in East Africa, namely the Great Lakes, Lake Solon and Lake Malawi, are not far away when viewed on the map and are distributed from north to south.

Given this distance, the East African government has naturally considered the idea of ​​opening up shipping between the three major lakes. In fact, this idea has a certain degree of possibility by building canals to connect the rivers in the basins of the three major lakes.

However, this is impossible for East Africa at present, mainly due to technical and efficiency issues.

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

The plan to replace 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. It is mainly mountainous and hilly, which is almost the common feature of major rivers in East Africa. Therefore, considering various factors, we can only choose water-rail combined transport to solve the problem of cargo transportation between Lake Solon and the Great Lakes."

"This is not just a problem for our Western Great Lakes Province, but also involves transportation issues between the northern industrial belt and the three central provinces."

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

"We know that Lake Solon is hundreds of meters deep, which means it is impossible to cross it with a bridge. Even if technology is developed, it will not be possible in the next hundred years. The lake is too large to build a bridge. If it were in Europe, the project would span across the country. It would be better to build a long highway along the lakeshore."

"That is essentially a detour, so the final solution is still water transportation, which is also the goal we are striving for in Bujumbura City, to become a bridge between the economic zone along the shores of Lake Solon and the future economic zone along the shores of the Great Lakes."

"We have now achieved our initial goal, which is to set up a station upstream of the Kagera River waterway. In this way, it only takes half an hour for goods from Bujumbura to be transported via the Mbu Railway, transferred to water transport in our province, and finally arrive in Kisumu City. We cannot complete this transportation line alone. The best way is to build a city similar to our 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 terrain around the five Great Lakes in the United States is plains, while the terrain between the three major lakes in East Africa is much more complicated, making it impossible for East Africa's shipping to be connected into a network.

(End of this chapter)