Chapter 530 Juba Comprehensive Training Base
Juba, the capital of Nile Province.
There have been obvious big moves in Juba recently, with the influx of a large number of workers and black slaves. Of course, the most conspicuous is the army, with the 311th East African Division entering the area.
Those who don't know might think that there is a big war to be fought, but it is obvious that this is a normal transfer. After all, Juba belongs to the rear, and if you want to fight, you should go to the north or the east. The north is Egypt, and the east is the Abyssinian Empire. However, even if East Africa is at war with these two countries, there is no need to station troops in Juba.
The so-called Nile Province is the former South Sudan and parts of Sudan. The development of the Nile Province has not been remarkable in recent years.
The first is the terrain problem. As a basin, the Nile Province is not a habitable area among the plateaus in East Africa.
Originally located in the tropics, the habitable areas in the tropics and the temperate cold zones, on the contrary, the cool climate areas such as mountains and plateaus are more suitable for human survival.
The most typical example in the previous life is Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In this time and space, due to the existence of East Africa, Brazil naturally cannot be the only one to take the lead. However, this does not prevent the Brazilian plateau from being a good place.
Therefore, tropical countries like East Africa, which are mainly plateaus, are rare good places. In fact, this is true. In the past, several major countries in the tropical region were all plateau countries, such as Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico...
Indonesia may be a little special, but its population is definitely concentrated in the plateaus and mountains, which can be seen from the population gap between islands such as Java and Kalimantan.
The Nile Province is located in the tropics and is a basin, so it is quite humid and hot. This stuffy environment is not necessarily better than the desert area to the north.
Although the northern desert is hot, it is dry. The southern part of the Nile Province is like a big pot with water in it for steaming buns, just like a sauna. It is okay to go into a sauna occasionally, but the feeling of living in it is self-evident.
Ernst even believed that the northern part of the Nile Province might have more development advantages than the southern part in the future. The first is oil, and the second is the Gezira Plain, which East Africa obtained for free from Sudan. That is a fertile land like the Nile River coast in Egypt. The area is not large, but it is easy to develop, saving trouble and worry. In fact, the population of the Nile Province is now mainly distributed in the Gezira Plain at the northernmost end.
Of course, most of the Gezira Plain is located in Sudan (Egypt), and East Africa is not the one that wants to wipe out all of them. Anyway, the oil fields have been occupied, so there is no need to include Sudan in the territory, provided that Egypt does not plot against East Africa. However, Egypt is in such a cowardly state now that it dares not get angry with East Africa.
In fact, Egypt was also a very powerful country in the past, especially during the Ali era, when it almost inherited the Ottoman Empire's dominant position in the Arab world. If it weren't for the British and French behind the scenes, the people in charge of the Arab world would have changed long ago.
Such a good place as the Gezira Plain is naturally used for growing crops. Ernst planned only two agricultural products here, one is wheat, and the other is Egyptian long-staple cotton.
Wheat is originally a product of the Arab region. Although the Gezira Plain belongs to East Africa, its climate is no different from that of most Arab regions.
The long-staple cotton business is quite easy to do. After all, the quality of cotton in Germany is not as good as that in East Africa, and East Africa has long-staple cotton, which is "soft gold". Naturally, the supply is in short supply, so the cotton planting area in East Africa is getting larger and larger, and most of it is sold to Germany.
Otherwise, Bulawayo in Matabele Province would not have been interested in this business. The textile industry has great potential and is exactly what East Africa and the German region lack.
The development of the cotton textile industry in Germany was limited by raw materials, so efforts were made to focus on heavy industry and railways. East Africa needed to develop military industry and heavy industry, and its policies were similar to those of Germany.
This mainly depends on what Ernst thinks. Ernst definitely prefers heavy industry and manufacturing, and these two industries are closely related to the military industry, so the East African central government will also lean towards these industries in terms of policy.
The central government has limited energy, so naturally the local government has more room to play in light industry. So if the city of Bulawayo can seize the opportunity, Ernst is willing to give them a push.
This is also related to Ernst's industrial layout. Bulawayo is located deep inland. If it can develop well, it will be conducive to the balanced development of East Africa's industry.
Of course, it is undeniable that Bulawayo’s success in the textile industry in Africa in its previous life was inseparable from the quality of local cotton. Although it is not as good as top-quality cotton, it is also a superior product, especially suitable for making jeans. Jeans made of Zimbabwean cotton are also very popular. In its previous life, most of Zimbabwe’s cotton was sold to Europe and the United States, so its strength should not be underestimated.
Back to the Nile Province, the climate in the north is obviously different from that in the south, so the crops in the tropical savannah areas in the south are also completely opposite.
As mentioned before, the Nile Province is a basin-shaped terrain, surrounded by the Azande Plateau, the East African Plateau, and the Ethiopian Plateau. These three plateaus are areas with abundant precipitation, so rivers of all sizes flow from the plateaus into the Nile Province. The Nile Province has only one river flowing into the sea, the Nile River, so the drainage is poor and there are vast areas of swamp wetlands in the Nile Province.
The main food crop in the Nile Province is naturally rice, and various plantation agricultures are also present, but the area is not as large as that of the plateau.
This is because there are too many rivers and swamps. If you want to develop South Sudan on a large scale, you cannot avoid rivers and wetlands. However, East Africa has no such plan because the land in East Africa is more than enough and quite surplus, so there is no need to compete with swamps.
After the 311th Division moved in, Juba underwent earth-shaking changes, mainly due to the construction of a large number of military facilities. What impressed the citizens of Juba the most was the establishment of a large number of military restricted areas.
Wooden signs were inserted in many places, with the words "Military area, no entry" written in large letters in paint.
At the same time, a no-entry pattern was thoughtfully painted on the wooden sign. The blood-red fork pattern is quite familiar to East Africans.
The reason behind such a big move in East Africa is to build a super-large training ground centered on Juba.
Training grounds are certainly not unfamiliar. The more well-known ones in the past include the U.S. Army's Fort Irwin National Training Center, Russia's 42nd Air Defense Combat Training Center, and Zhurihe of the Far Eastern Empire.
There is no essential difference between the Juba Integrated Combat Training Base built in Juba, East Africa and these training grounds.
It’s just that the conditions here are more complicated, including plateaus, mountains, plains (basins), rivers, lakes, swamps, deserts (sand), jungles, grasslands... it can be said that they cover all aspects.
The Nile Province is a typical sparsely populated area in East Africa. At least before the development of oil, its development potential was not high, making it very suitable for military training.
East Africa is the country that attaches the most importance to warfare in tropical areas, and warfare in tropical areas cannot avoid several tropical climate types. There are not many areas like Juba and its surrounding areas that gather various tropical climate types, and even if there are, the area is not as large as here. Even the entire East African army can train here.
The most important training subjects here in East Africa are tropical jungle warfare, land and sea coordinated operations, and mountain training.
These can be said to be the three most common types of warfare in tropical regions, and East Africa focuses on these three combat modes. The idea is very simple, that is, to target the South Pacific region.
East Africa has already established a firm foothold in the Lan Fang overseas province, and Ernst regards the future of Southeast Asia as an important part of the East African world strategy.
Moreover, fighting in tropical regions is not easy. Ernst has always been vigilant about the lessons learned by the United States in the jungles of Vietnam in the past. Naturally, East Africa must adapt to this combat mode in advance.
Moreover, East Africa itself is a tropical country with a vast area, diverse climate types, complex terrain, and diverse national defense needs. This is why Ernst built the Juba Comprehensive Training Base.
(End of this chapter)
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