African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1079 Water Conservancy Construction
Of course, easing the relationship between East Africa and Brazil in this way can only be a temporary solution, not a fundamental solution. After all, East Africa itself is a major coffee producer in the world, and East African coffee is relatively famous in the world, especially the coffee in Kenya. After more than ten years of marketing, it has gained widespread recognition and has become a hot-selling product in Europe.

Therefore, even if East Africa gives concessions to Brazil, they are very limited. On the contrary, East Africa gains more benefits from Brazil. Brazil has actually become one of East Africa's important overseas raw material suppliers.

This is the gap between industrial countries and agricultural countries. Although East Africa can only be regarded as a semi-industrial country, Brazil, in comparison, has a lower industrial level.

Moreover, Brazil's geographical location is not good. South America is too far away from other markets. The closest countries to Brazil are the United States and East Africa, and the current industrial levels of these two countries are higher than Brazil.

Take the coffee trade for example. Coffee grown in Brazil can only be sold to other countries. After all, the country’s processing level is not high and it lacks independent sales channels.

In fact, the same is true for Argentina, except that Argentina has vast plains, which are easy to develop, and its population is relatively small compared to Brazil. In addition to other reasons, the economic development of the two countries is completely different at this stage.

Lecamon: "In short, the purpose of our 'friendly' exchange this time is to demonstrate East Africa's strong military strength, so that Brazil and other South American countries will have fewer distractions when trading with us."

To put it bluntly, East Africa wants to intimidate South American countries through "gunboat diplomacy" to safeguard its interests in South America. Of course, deterrence is still the main focus.

While Cher and Lecamon were talking, the Brazilian side also had mixed feelings about the arrival of the East Africans, especially the two most advanced dreadnoughts in the world, which made the Brazilian government's evaluation of East Africa even higher.

Brazilian President Nilo Pesanha said: "In front of the East African battleship, we can clearly realize the gap between the two countries. We still underestimated the strength of this East African country."

Although the South African War made East Africa stand out in the world, the impression given by East Africa at that time was more of its strong military strength, especially the army's military strength.

Later, when the dreadnought came into being and East Africa became the second country in the world to own a dreadnought, and it was completely manufactured by East Africa itself, people realized that East Africa also had considerable strength in industry.

In Rio de Janeiro, in the presence of the East African Fleet, Ambassador Lecamon and Brazilian President Nilo Pesanha had a friendly exchange.

In addition to military deterrence, East Africa is not a bad guy. It also brings many cooperation plans.

This includes building submarine cables between East Africa and South America, strengthening information exchanges between Brazil and East Africa, establishing a more smooth diplomatic mechanism, strengthening economic cooperation between the two countries, and jointly responding to the development of emerging tropical plantation areas such as Southeast Asia...

Although Brazil and East Africa are competitors in agriculture, the two countries still have some common topics when dealing with competitors such as Southeast Asia, India, and Caribbean countries.

"President Pesanha, thank you for your recognition. I believe the relationship between East Africa and Brazil will eventually become closer and closer." After signing a large number of cooperation agreements, Ambassador Lecamon said with satisfaction.

President Pesania had a pleasant look on his face, but no one knew what he was thinking. However, in front of the East African fleet, he did not have too many bad thoughts.

This brings us to Pesania, who is a Republican from Rio de Janeiro. So when the East African fleet docked at the port of Rio de Janeiro, he naturally showed more "respect" for East Africa.

Afterwards, under the escort of the East African Navy, Ambassador Lecamon left Brazil and headed towards Uruguay, his next stop.

This time, the East African Navy will visit Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina respectively.

As for Chile, although East Africa also has ideas, the East African Navy is also afraid of the wind and waves in the Drake Passage. If the ship capsizes there, the East African Navy will suffer a great loss. ...

Rhine City.

East Africa is active in both the Far East and South America, mainly to expand the market. It does not matter what means are used as long as the effect can be achieved.

While East Africa is conducting frequent diplomatic activities, its own countries are still evaluating their current development situation.

It is not necessary to discuss the specific circumstances of the two five-year plans. After all, some policies in East Africa started long before the five-year plans, such as the construction of water conservancy in East Africa.

Minister of Water Resources Yarsd reported: "So far, our country has built 247 large reservoirs, 1,937 medium-sized reservoirs, and more than 63,000 small reservoirs, with a total storage capacity of nearly 400 billion cubic meters."

In the past, the storage capacity of the Three Gorges Reservoir of the Far Eastern Empire was 39.3 billion cubic meters, which is close to 40 billion cubic meters. This means that in the more than half a century from the colonial period to the present, East Africa has built the equivalent of ten Three Gorges Reservoirs.

In fact, East Africa does have a need to build a large number of reservoirs, but the role of the large number of natural lakes in East Africa cannot be ignored. Take Lake Malawi, the smallest of the three largest freshwater lakes in East Africa, for example. The water storage capacity of Lake Malawi is about 8 trillion cubic meters.

What does 8 trillion cubic meters mean? This is no different from some seas. For example, the water volume of Bohai Sea is about 2 trillion cubic meters, and Lake Malawi is about four times that of Bohai Sea.

Of course, in addition to this super large lake in the world, there are many large naturally formed lakes in East Africa, especially in the East African Plateau and central East Africa, which can all serve as reservoirs.

So although the results of East Africa's efforts over the past half century are very impressive, compared to nature, these efforts of East Africans are not even a fraction of what they have achieved.

Yarsde continued, "In the past thirty years, my country has built more than three million kilometers of artificial canals, one million mechanical wells, and more than 200,000 kilometers of various embankments. At the same time, it has also completed the management of most of the river basins in China. In general, my country's water conservancy construction achievements in the past have been very outstanding, making outstanding contributions to my country's industrial, agricultural and urban water supply, and greatly improving my country's inland water transportation conditions."

"Especially during the 1990s to the Second Five-Year Plan, we completed the entire East African Canal project, which greatly enhanced our country's sea-river transport capacity."

Of course, the East African Canal is mainly completed by connecting the Zambezi River system and the Congo River system, so even if you want to open it to navigation, you have to go through a complicated transit procedure, and because of geographical restrictions, there are many compromises. At present, if you want to open the entire line, only ships under 300 tons can pass.

"The construction of the canal has greatly improved my country's inland water transport capacity and reduced my country's logistics costs. It is an important supplement to the existing transportation network. With the acceleration of my country's economic construction and due to land reasons, the requirements for transportation and logistics are getting higher and higher."

East Africa has a vast territory and a relatively small population, which undoubtedly increases the logistics costs in East Africa. Therefore, the East African government, or Ernst himself, has always attached great importance to the country's transportation construction.

Although the current railway and road networks in East Africa have greatly improved transportation conditions in East Africa, water transportation has always been something Ernst has been thinking about.

The development of water transportation was also a major difficulty in East Africa. At least two million black laborers paid the price of their lives before the Grand East African Canal was built.

(End of this chapter)