Chapter 504 Borrowing People
April 1879.
Western Great Lakes Province, Bujumbura City.
Bujumbura, the capital of Western Great Lakes Province, is built on the shores of Lake Solon (Tanganyika), and March and April are the time when the long rainy season arrives.
The rain came quite fast this year. The annual precipitation in Bujumbura was between 800mm and 1000mm in normal years, but this year it exceeded 2000mm, and even exceeded 3000mm in some areas. Most of the surging river water flowed into Lake Solon along the river channel, but there were still many areas where the river water could not outrun the gathering speed of the rain water, flooding large tracts of farmland on both sides of the river.
This made Nakin, a senior official of the Western Great Lakes Province, very worried. He frowned and said, "The rainfall in the Western Great Lakes Province this year is a bit too abundant. We have received reports from many places. In the western area close to the Hesse Province, the rainfall even reached 130 mm a day. The precipitation in most parts of the province has exceeded the peak. I am afraid that the grain production plan of the province this year will be greatly damaged."
Western Great Lakes Province is composed of Burundi, the entire territory of Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and parts of Congo in the past. Therefore, the flood disaster in Western Great Lakes Province this time affected a wide area. The provincial capital Bujumbura was not seriously affected, while other areas, especially the rainy areas, suffered greater losses.
However, the situation in Bujumbura is not serious compared with other places in the Western Great Lakes Province. Bujumbura is actually located in an area where there is usually less rainfall. Now that even Bujumbura has suffered a disaster, the situation in other areas can be imagined.
"Your Excellency, there is nothing we can do. Natural disasters are uncontrollable. We can only try our best to recover the losses and dredge the rivers throughout the province to prevent the floods from submerging more farmland. We should also start emergency rescue and disaster relief within the province," said the assistant.
The assistant's words brought Najin's thoughts back to solving the problem. He smiled bitterly and said, "Yes! Now is not the time to complain. You should immediately organize people to collect statistics on the disaster. Grain depots in various places should be prepared and ready to provide disaster relief at any time. The health department should not take it lightly. As the saying goes, a major disaster will inevitably be followed by a major epidemic. Do a good job of disinfection..."
Najin arranged the disaster relief tasks in an orderly manner. As a province with abundant rainfall, West Lake Province would encounter such a year of abnormally increased rainfall every few years, so it had seen it many times and had rich experience in dealing with it.
Correspondingly, several provinces surrounding the Great Lakes region, such as the Northern Great Lakes Province, South Prussia Province, and the Plateau Province, were also affected by the heavy rain. However, heavier rain in these areas is not a bad thing, especially in the Plateau Province, which usually has less precipitation. Now that the floods have arrived, the animals on the Galenseti grassland are living a more comfortable life.
The Great Lakes region as a whole was affected by the disaster, and a decrease 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 has a great impact on the national grain output 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, especially in the central provinces, the coastal plains have built a number of water conservancy projects, including digging canals, renovating farmland irrigation systems, managing rivers, building reservoirs, etc. These projects have greatly stabilized and improved the grain output in the coastal plains, ensuring stable yields regardless of drought or flood, and surpassing the Great Lakes region to return to the top position.
Constantine: "You're going to apply the same measures to the Great Lakes as you do to the coast?"
Ernst: "The natural conditions in the Great Lakes region are much better than those in the coastal plains, and even better than those in France. What is lacking is only infrastructure. Otherwise, the level of agricultural development in the Great Lakes region should be higher than that in France."
When it comes to agriculture, France is truly far ahead. Although the United States is also strong, its agriculture is very rough and relies more on the huge area of arable land. On average, France is better, especially since France's arable land was not snatched from the Indians like the United States. The living standards of French farmers are generally higher.
The land in East Africa is of ill-gotten origin, just like that in the United States, and its agricultural development is not as good as the other two. Fortunately, East Africa is located in the tropics, which has enabled its tropical agricultural economy to develop and avoid competition with many temperate countries. The only countries that can compete with East Africa are Brazil and Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia has not developed at all, and Brazil is relatively turbulent and chaotic, without the political stability of East Africa.
Of course, Brazil's first-mover advantage cannot be ignored, but East Africa is rapidly eliminating Brazil's first-mover advantage, and the means for East Africa to narrow the gap is to develop water conservancy.
Water conservancy projects can be large or small. East Africa can solve this problem according to its own needs. Brazil may be able to cope with small-scale water conservancy projects, but its ability to handle 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. Large-scale water conservancy projects will inevitably occupy land, and it will be too difficult for the Brazilian government to bribe those large landowners.
Ernst said to Constantine: "The government doesn't have much to do right now, and many inland areas are undeveloped, so this time we should just overhaul water conservancy projects across the country, following the model of water conservancy projects in coastal plains."
Constantine pondered for a moment and said, "This is a huge project!"
Ernst: "Father, it doesn't matter. I didn't expect to finish it all at once. After all, Africa is so underdeveloped that it's probably only slightly better than Oceania among all the continents in the world. We still have enough black people now, so we should do more large-scale projects to narrow the gap with other continents."
It can be said that the vast majority of areas in the East African region entered the agricultural society for the first time after being incorporated into East Africa. Many places can be said to have maintained the original appearance of the earth. Therefore, the difficulties encountered by East Africa in developing land are very daunting.
However, the natural conditions in East Africa are relatively good. Once these lands are developed, they can produce good agricultural returns, so in Ernst's view it is a profitable business.
However, if East Africa wants to catch up with those regions 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, and East Africa can pass these negative factors on to the black people. If Ernst had not come from later generations and knew that colonization would backfire on itself, Ernst really wanted to keep these black people as objects of exploitation.
Constantine: "Well, now that we have made the decision, 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, Germany and Austria, for help this time.
Housing and construction water conservancy projects also require professional talents. This time Ernst plans to build water conservancy projects across the country, and the talent gap required is not small, so he simply borrows some people from Germany and Austria to guide the construction of water conservancy projects across East Africa.
The German and Austrian governments immediately agreed to East Africa's request for help. Borrowing some manpower was not a big problem and could be considered as doing East Africa a favor.
Therefore, with the cooperation between the two governments, East Africa invited more than 200 water conservancy technical experts from the two countries at one time to come to East Africa to guide the construction of water conservancy projects.
For this water conservancy project construction, Ernst planned to launch a saturation attack. In twenty years, he would complete the journey that other countries took hundreds of years to complete and pave the way for agricultural development in East Africa.
(End of this chapter)
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