Chapter 1363: Kitwe City’s Transformation Path
The rapid development of the pharmaceutical industry has been generally influenced by the overall environment of East Africa. Just like people in places prone to floods are good at building water conservancy facilities, the East African pharmaceutical industry happened to be born in a relatively poor sanitary environment.
Without solving the medical and health problem, it will be difficult for the East African country to develop, especially in areas of the country with a relatively humid and hot climate, or in places where various tropical diseases are prone to breed.
This is directly related to the survival of the people, so even in the poorest colonial era, East African governments placed health care governance at the forefront of national development affairs.
…
Kitwe City.
Among East African cities, Kitwe does not appear often, but it is an industrial city that plays a very important role in East African history.
By 1920, the total population of Kitwe City reached more than 300,000. The copper belt region where it is located is also the largest non-ferrous metal smelting and processing center in East Africa.
Kitwe is the second largest city in the Copperbelt region after Lubumbashi.
In the national administrative division change in 1896, Kitwe City was separated from Swabia Province and assigned to the new Central Province, which is now the Central Province with Rhine City, the capital of East Africa, as its core.
Lubumbashi continues to retain its status as the capital of Swabia Province, which has led to an increasing gap between the two cities. This is easy to understand. As the provincial capital, Lubumbashi is at a higher political level than Kitwe, and the policy resources it enjoys are not comparable to those of Kitwe.
However, this cannot temporarily change Kitwe's identity and status as one of the more industrially developed cities in East Africa. After all, in terms of population, Kitwe ranks among the top 30 cities in East Africa.
In other countries, Kitwe can be considered a big city, but in East Africa it is only a medium-sized city.
The formation of Kitwe City originated from the mining of local copper mines in East Africa, which was also one of the most important sources of income for East African countries in the early days.
In the last century, copper has been East Africa's most important export mineral, bringing a lot of fiscal revenue to East Africa. However, Kitwe, a city that made its fortune from copper mining, is now facing problems.
As a result, the Kitwe City Government had to discuss the increasingly difficult economic development situation and find new ways out and future development directions for Kitwe's economy.
March 1920.
At this time, the European flu had not yet spread to Kitwe, but the entire Kitwe City Government was still in a state of panic.
Kitwe Mayor Deborn convened a new round of economic development meetings attended by city officials and local businesses in Kitwe.
Debern said to the participants with a serious face: "Everyone, I believe you already understand the purpose of this meeting, which is how to solve the economic development problems that our city has encountered recently."
“Although on the surface, since the establishment of Kitwe City in the late 1970s, our city has developed very rapidly.”
"Today, Kitwe has grown from a small, unknown place on the African continent to a large city with a population of 320,000 and is well-known around the world."
“However, we should also realize that the development of Kitwe City has been constrained in recent years. Especially under external competition, the development of Kitwe City seems to be increasingly difficult.”
DeBern's statement is obviously exaggerated. In fact, the world economy has just experienced a brief depression due to the European influenza pandemic.
Before that, at least in East Africa, affected by the war dividends, most cities in the country were in a stage of rapid development, even Kitwe.
So, in recent years, the development speed of Kitwe City has been neither fast nor slow, but rather very fast. But why Debern is so nervous has to be explained from other aspects.
DeBern's next words explain the source of his "alarmist" remarks.
"Some people think I am worrying too much. After all, Kitwe has been in a development stage for decades. Even during the 1940s and 1950s, Kitwe's economy grew very fast."
"However, we obviously cannot just look at the surface, but need to look further ahead. Even now, we should be aware of the problems encountered by our city's industrial development."
"Tell me, what is the real economic situation of our city? You can speak freely now." DeBern threw the question to everyone.
Someone said, "Mr. Mayor, you must be talking about the industrial structure issue! After all, the country emphasized this issue when drafting the five-year plan at the end of last year."
It is well known that Kitwe's industrial structure is too single because its economy is highly dependent on copper resources.
This would naturally not have been a problem in the past. Over the past few decades, East Africa has vigorously developed industries such as electricity, automobiles, and machinery, resulting in a huge demand for metals such as copper. This has also enabled Kitwe to maintain rapid development for decades.
Debern nodded and said, "Yes, what else?"
Someone said: "In addition to the industrial structure, the difficulties our city's economy is facing also include external competition, and this competition is becoming increasingly fierce."
Kitwe Mayor Debern said: "Yes, in recent years, copper mines in South America and Southeast Asia have posed a major threat to the domestic copper belt, which has indirectly led to the shrinkage of our city's copper exports and has had a huge impact on the city's industry."
"At the same time, a number of copper smelting and metal processing companies have been established on the east and west coasts, forming a competitive relationship with our city's downstream industries."
"Imported copper ore from abroad has a large output, low price, and little pollution to the domestic environment. This makes the top leaders support the development of companies that rely on imported copper ore."
Copper mining, or the development of any mineral resources, is accompanied by environmental pollution, but the cities in the East African Copperbelt are particularly serious in this regard.
Because it is located in the hinterland of East Africa and is the confluence of the Congo River and the Zambezi River, the industrial wastewater discharged by cities in the East African Copper Belt every year has a serious impact on the middle and lower reaches of the river.
Kitwe's copper production is very abundant, but the copper imported from East Africa's own colonies or economically backward regions is also very cost-effective and has little impact on the local environment. This has put East African copper producing areas such as Kitwe in a very embarrassing situation.
"In order to cope with competition from overseas copper mines and similar domestic production companies, especially in coastal areas, the time has come for Kitwe City to change," said Mayor Deborn.
“In fact, we can already see the initial clues from the economic growth rate of Kitwe City in recent years, that is, although our city is still in a stage of rapid development, the growth rate has begun to slow down.”
“It is not obvious now, but when copper smelting, non-ferrous metal processing and other enterprises and factories are established in the coastal areas, and Kitwe has not completed the transformation by then, it will be a disaster for our city’s economy.”
Someone asked, "Mayor, what do you mean?"
Mayor Debern said: "It is natural to change and reshape our city's economy. Now is 1920, the first year of the implementation of the country's fifth five-year plan. We should respond to the central government's policies and transform our city's economy."
Then Debern said: "At present, my views on the economic development of our city are as follows. First of all, our city's conditions, excluding copper resources, do not have significant advantages compared with other cities in the country."
“Kitwe is a city that thrives on copper mining, but apart from copper mining, what other significant advantages does our city have?”
“Politically, our city is just an ordinary prefecture-level city. Its status in the province is not only inferior to that of Rhine City, New Frankfurt City and Lusaka City, but may even be ranked behind that of Kabwe City.”
"In terms of transportation, our city does not have any significant advantages. Although we have railways, roads and canals, it is not an important national transportation hub like New Frankfurt."
After decades of development, transportation in East Africa is now very developed, with a railway and road network established across the country. This has greatly depreciated the value of the so-called "transportation hub" in East Africa.
Unless it is a transportation hub like New Frankfurt that occupies an important position in East Africa, it is worthy of attention.
This is particularly evident in railways. In the last century, there were few railways in East Africa and their mileage was short, which enabled any city along the railway to benefit from it and promote urban development.
However, today, East Africa has become the second largest railway country in the world, with a national railway mileage of more than 300,000 kilometers. Basically, all slightly important cities are connected by railways.
In this case, the status of cities along the railway and even some railway hub cities has greatly declined. In the era when railways were scarce, there were few routes to choose from. But now that the East African railways are so developed, there are many routes to choose from, which has in turn alleviated the role of some railway hubs.
For example, in the last century, when the East African Central Railway was built, most personnel and materials were heavily dependent on the operation of the Central Railway. Now, the proportion of personnel and goods on the Central Railway has actually declined significantly.
This is the case for some important railway or road hubs, not to mention that Kitwe is not an important transportation hub. Of course, Kitwe is also a city where roads, railways and canals intersect, but such transportation hubs are everywhere in East Africa.
Just like the Far Eastern Empire in the previous life, with the construction of road and railway networks, numerous regional transportation hubs were formed. This is a good thing for the entire country, but it is not a good thing for some of the original important transportation hub cities.
Although Kitwe was not a transportation hub in the last century, because there were few railways in East Africa at that time, Kitwe City, as it was located along the Central Railway, benefited from it. However, with the completion of the East African national railway network, the impact of the railway on urban development has become very weak.
The situation of Kitwe's water transportation is just the opposite. Due to the terrain of East Africa itself, East Africa's water transportation has never been able to occupy an important position in transportation and can only serve as a supplement to railways and roads. Therefore, although Kitwe has an artificial canal, it is difficult to develop based on this.
DeBern went on to say: “In terms of transportation, our city does not have the favorable conditions to become a national center for commerce, trade, logistics, etc.”
"As for resources, although our city's copper resources occupy an important position in the country, they are also threatened by external competition."
"First, the rise of external copper mining areas has made our copper resources a substitutable resource. Secondly, the copper mines in the empire are also evenly distributed, which has also had an impact on our copper mining and other related industries in Kitwe."
The copper resources in the Copper Belt are the richest in East Africa, but the copper resources in other regions of East Africa are actually not few either. For example, the provinces of Bohemia, Salzburg, and the West Coast all have considerable copper reserves.
"Except for copper resources, our city's other resource shortcomings are very obvious, which is also an important reason for the relatively single industrial structure of our city."
"In other areas, such as education and scientific research, our city is not outstanding either, which makes the position of our city's advantageous industries unstable."
“Therefore, Kitwe’s development prospects are not clear, or even very bleak. Under such circumstances, if we do not reintegrate the city’s resources and adjust the industrial structure, Kitwe may decline in the future and drop out of the top 20 economies in the country.”
Kitwe's population ranks among the top 30 in East Africa, but its economy ranks among the top 20 in the country. This also shows that Kitwe's economic quality is relatively high in East Africa.
And it is precisely because of this that Mayor Debern is unwilling to see Kitwe decline into an unnecessary city in the empire in the future.
After all, Kitwe has a good economy, which has led to the quality of Kitwe's officials always being at an upper-middle level in the country. And it is precisely because of this that these high-quality bureaucrats are more "motivated".
The reason why I say this is simple. If bureaucrats in any country in the world want to "advance", they will inevitably seek to work in economically developed regions. This is actually a form of talent siphoning.
At that time, Kitwe was considered a relatively economically developed region in East Africa, so the quality of officials in Kitwe was higher than that in other regions in East Africa.
Only mediocre bureaucrats would choose, or have to be "exiled" to backward areas to sit on the bench, at least this is the case when the highest level of government does not intervene.
This can easily lead to a vicious cycle, where capable officials will actively move to economically developed regions, while mediocre or even useless bureaucrats will stay in economically difficult areas to "abuse their power", which will further aggravate the unbalanced development among regions.
Deborn is the mayor of Kitwe because he has the ability and ideas, so he does not want to see the decline of Kitwe.
“So, for the development of Kitwe, we should come up with practical solutions. At least during my term, Kitwe must be transformed successfully,” Deborn told the rest of the city government.
"Our city's industries must be transformed and diversified, gradually getting rid of the heavy dependence on copper resources and focusing on agriculture, energy, manufacturing and the environment."
"Especially in the manufacturing industry, we need to promote the development of emerging industries such as electricity, auto parts, and home appliance manufacturing. Our city itself has a developed non-ferrous metal smelting and deep processing system. Relying on this, we can promote the development of related industries and achieve leverage."
“At the same time, we will promote cooperation with the cities of Rhineland, Mbeya and New Frankfurt to introduce new technologies, new talents and new concepts.”
The main reason for this is that Kitwe’s education and scientific research capabilities are relatively weak. After all, higher education and large-scale scientific research in East Africa are mainly led by the East African central government, and Kitwe does not have any national key universities and laboratories, so it naturally lacks relevant talents and technologies.
Kitwe itself cannot produce these resources. Although Kitwe's economic capacity has the foundation to develop education and scientific research, without the approval of Rhine City, Kitwe naturally has no way to build good universities and key laboratories.
However, Kitwe is not without advantages. It is close to Rhine City and is under the jurisdiction of Rhine City. After all, Kitwe City belongs to the Central Province and the provincial government is also in Rhine City. Therefore, Kitwe City can get policies and talents first. This situation is at least better than most cities in East Africa.
(End of this chapter)
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