African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1043 Chemical Safety
An important factor limiting the development of agriculture in East Africa is the fertility of the land. There is no shortage of relatively fertile land in East Africa, such as the volcanic ash soil distribution area in the northern part of the East African Plateau (mainly Kenya), the Great Lakes region with excellent water and soil conditions, the black soil distribution area in Mozambique, and so on.

However, there are also many relatively poor lands in East Africa, especially in tropical rainforests or desert areas, so improving soil fertility requires the participation of the fertilizer industry.

Fortunately, during the First Five-Year Plan, the framework of East Africa's pesticide and fertilizer industries had been basically established. During the Second Five-Year Plan, the chemical industry, as a weak link in East Africa's basic industries, will receive greater support.

The chemical industry is not only related to agriculture-related fields such as pesticides and fertilizers, but also involves the national defense industry. Many chemical products are naturally explosives or used in other production links of the national defense industry. Therefore, the chemical industry occupies an important position in East Africa's Second Five-Year Plan. Whether it is for agriculture, or light or heavy industry, the chemical industry is extremely important.

Of course, East Africa has many shortcomings in the field of chemical industry compared with countries like Germany, but it depends on how to distinguish them. In East Africa, the oil industry should actually belong to a category of chemical industry, but because of East Africa's emphasis on oil, it is separately distinguished for management. The oil industry in East Africa is already quite developed, which also means that East Africa occupies an advantageous position in the field of petrochemicals. Similarly, the rubber industry is also closely related to the chemical industry, so the true level of East Africa's chemical industry still needs to be verified.

Of course, Ernst cannot play a big role in the development of East Africa's chemical industry for the time being. He is unfamiliar with this field. It is already quite rare for him to elevate the chemical industry to a strategic position in East Africa's own industrial development.

For countries with a planned economic system like East Africa, it is easiest to achieve results when concentrating efforts on developing a certain field. Therefore, as long as there are no major problems with the direction, as the Second Five-Year Plan develops, East Africa's chemical industry will obviously make greater progress than during the First Five-Year Plan period.

Back to the point, Ernst said to Finkel: "The Ministry of Agriculture can do a lot of work, such as meteorological research, agricultural structure, breeding of fine varieties, land improvement and management, etc. Don't just focus on agricultural machinery, fertilizers, and pesticide production. These things can't appear out of thin air without a certain level of industrial foundation. With the advancement of the Second Five-Year Plan, there will always be development, so don't be too anxious."

Among the methods of increasing agricultural output, chemical fertilizers and pesticides are the most effective, but other methods are not completely ineffective. It’s just that it’s easier to produce results without increasing the amount of chemical fertilizers and pesticides used.

Moreover, as a person with experience, Ernst knows the importance of pesticides and fertilizers, but sustainable agricultural development is also indispensable.

"Fertilizers and pesticides, especially pesticides, must be produced with caution. The safety of many pesticides is not clear, so we cannot rely entirely on the protection effect of pesticides on crops. Harmless to agricultural products does not mean harmless to the human body or the ecology. To put it bluntly, some pesticides are poisonous if not handled properly. If they pollute water sources and soil on a large scale, the consequences are disastrous!"

At this point, Ernst himself broke out in a sweat. It seemed that he had not paid attention to the issue of chemical industry production safety for a long time.

A large number of chemical plants were built in East Africa during the First Five-Year Plan. These chemical plants may not be without safety hazards. It seems that I need to specifically remind the relevant departments and ask them to conduct a major screening of the chemical industry in East Africa.

Safety hazards in the chemical industry are no joke. In the past, both the United States and India have experienced serious chemical disasters, especially the Bhopal gas leak in India, which was even included in history textbooks because of the heavy casualties.

The Bhopal gas attack in India caused at least 2.5 direct deaths, 55 indirect deaths, and more than 20 permanent disabilities, which was more severe than the abnormally high temperatures in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Bhopal gas incident was caused by an American-invested pesticide factory in India in the past. If a disaster of this scale broke out in East Africa, it would almost be equivalent to the death of the entire population of Dar es Salaam. After all, the total population of Dar es Salaam is only more than 800,000.

And who can be sure how much India and the United States covered up the Bhopal gas incident in the past? The more than 700,000 people injured and killed were enough to shock the world. At that time, the Soviet Union, the mortal enemy of the United States, was still alive, and the Bhopal gas incident was closely related to the United States. The more Ernst thought about it, the more terrifying it felt. At present, the chemical industry in the world is in a relatively rough development stage, even East Africa is no exception. After all, human cognition of chemical substances is far from enough, so it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the national chemical industry.

After Ernst finished his conversation with the Ministry of Agriculture, he went to talk to the chemical industry management department.

Ernst said bluntly: "The development of the chemical industry cannot be sloppy. Some chemicals are toxic and have potential hazards such as explosion. Therefore, chemical production safety is an important part of the development of the chemical industry during the Second Five-Year Plan, including the layout of the chemical industry. You must also check and fill in the gaps in the original plan, and correct the unreasonable layout of some chemical plants in a timely manner."

The industrial department did not immediately agree to what Ernst said, but said: "Your Highness, the problem is that some of our projects have already started construction. If we start all over again, the losses will be too great."

Ernst was naturally aware of this, and he said: "For projects that have already started construction, let's proceed as planned for the time being! However, we need to improve construction standards, establish strict production processes, and properly handle waste."

The Second Five-Year Plan has already begun to be implemented. Some projects have even been under construction since the end of the First Five-Year Plan, and the projects are halfway completed. It is naturally impossible to overturn all of them at this time. We can only adopt a delaying tactic and wait a few years to resolve these possible hidden dangers through industrial technology upgrades.

Since we are discussing the issue of production safety rectification in the chemical industry, other industrial sectors are naturally indispensable.

Ernst stressed: "In the past, we used black laborers to perform risky work in engineering construction, but this is not feasible in the industrial field. After all, these black laborers have no professional qualities and may cause serious problems in the production process."

After all, the reason why the Bhopal gas attack happened in India has a lot to do with the quality of Indian employees. Based on Ernst's understanding of Indians, they are relatively perfunctory, especially at the military level, where they often crash planes and sink ships. If it were a normal country, they would be ashamed.

After all, if the military, a department that should attach the most importance to discipline and rules and regulations, can get away with it, then other industries and government departments in India must not be much better, so it is completely reasonable for the Bhopal gas incident to happen in India.

Although the East African blacks are not Indians, their understanding of things in this era is probably not as good as that of the Indians. After all, the Indians have seen a lot of the world under British rule, while the East African blacks have only been working like slaves for East Africa for a few decades.

"Of course, in addition to black workers, we also need to strengthen safety education for our people, strengthen production training, formulate and supervise the implementation of rules and regulations. Production safety is no small matter, especially in the chemical industry and some industries with certain risks."

Amid Ernst's endless teaching, the East African industrial sector began to discuss and study the issue of "production safety", which also meant that the work of the government and enterprises would be further intensified during the Second Five-Year Plan. However, this did indeed make East Africa tighten the rough development of its industry in the new round of industrial development.

(End of this chapter)