African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1193 "Utopia"

Secondly, the current business in Mombasa is more important than that in Dar es Salaam. After all, it is the bridgehead where East Africa and Eurasia meet, so many foreign trade businesses and exchange centers are set up in Mombasa.

Now, with the war going on in Europe, many businesses originally in the hands of European powers have naturally transferred to East Africa, making Mombasa the most important information hub on the east coast of East Africa.

Thanks to the advancement of East African communication technology, the growth of the country's telecommunications industry, the popularization of telegraphs and telephones, orders placed in Mombasa can be quickly sent across East Africa, without having to go to a specific city to complete commercial tasks.

Therefore, in addition to a large number of exchanges and communication centers, Mombasa also has sites established by many large East African companies, or is simply the headquarters of the company.

Therefore, in order not to disrupt the current status of Mombasa, the East African government, after careful consideration, decided to place the exhibition in the urban circle of Dar es Salaam.

This actually to a certain extent also explains the relative decline of Dar es Salaam's status among East African cities. This is actually easy to understand. After the rise of a number of east coast port cities such as Beira, Maputo, New Hamburg Port, Pemba, etc., they are bound to compete with Dar es Salaam.

After all, Dar es Salaam is not Shanghai, which sits at the leading position of the golden waterway, the Yangtze River. In terms of railway and road transportation, those up-and-coming cities in East Africa are not inferior to Dar es Salaam.

But it is different for Mombasa. It can be said that it has no competitors at all. To this day, the dividends of the Northern Railway are still firmly in the hands of Mombasa.

Of course, the last point is that the reason for choosing the Dar es Salaam urban area as the venue for the exhibition is that Dar es Salaam is enough. Today, Dar es Salaam is still the largest city in East Africa, and its comprehensive strength is still the strongest. There are no shortcomings in other aspects, which is enough to deal with the personnel from participating countries.

At least that's what was apparent from the discussions among Brazilian exhibitors.

Yodel continued to comment: "I noticed a lot of details, such as the roads in Dar es Salaam, which are obviously smoother. Although this may be related to the performance of the car, you see, the roads in East Africa are completely paved with black asphalt, while only a few urban roads in Rio de Janeiro have this treatment."

"And the characteristics of East African road design are very obvious. There are various lines and special patterns on the asphalt road surface. I think they must have special purposes."

At this point, Yodel began to ask the East African driver in German. Before that, he had been talking to his colleagues in Portuguese. The East African driver, an old native of Dar es Salaam, naturally could not participate because he could not understand.

Because he had been an immigrant in Brazil for too long, Yodel's German was obviously not very fluent, and he communicated with the East African driver in a halting manner.

"Mr. Driver, what's your name?"

"Hello sir, I can call you Focelli, what can I do for you?"

"Mr. Fokherini, I just have a small question. I noticed that there are many patterns and lines on the roads in East Africa, some painted on the road surface, and some used on warning signs. Is this a unified traffic rule?"

Focellini said: "It's like this. The white paint divides the road. The most basic function is to differentiate the road. For example, we are now in the inner lane. Vehicles in the same lane are traveling in the same direction. Of course, it also serves as an indication and warning. For example, you cannot change lanes on the solid line, but you can change lanes in the dotted area..."

These natural traffic rules were all completed under the guidance of Ernst. In fact, early East African transportation was not as strict as it is today.

After all, there were not many cars in East Africa before, and vehicles such as horse-drawn carriages were not fast, so complicated traffic rules were not necessary. It was not until the 1990s when the number of vehicles in East Africa increased that the East African government began to improve and implement more stringent road traffic rules.

After Yodel translated these knowledge points into Portuguese and shared them with his colleagues, he once again aroused unanimous praise from Brazilians.

As an experienced driver, Fokellini particularly likes the feeling of being praised by foreign friends. Now with Yodel, who can speak German, as an interpreter, he completely opened up and began to introduce many details of East Africa bit by bit.

"The green belts in the middle and on both sides of the road, according to foreign tourists or businessmen I have met, seem to be only found in East Africa. In addition to beautifying the environment, these green belts can also eliminate a certain amount of noise and dust. Of course, the effect is definitely limited, but I believe it is true."

"If you touch these green belts, you can see that there is a certain amount of dust adsorbed on the leaves before the sprinkler truck waters them."

"Our roads in East Africa use the latest traffic light system. They all use electricity as a power source and are arranged at large and small intersections or other complex sections in Dar es Salaam..."

The Brazilian people were fascinated by what they heard. From Fukerini's words, everyone could feel the power of East Africa's transportation system, which embodies the advantages of order, fairness, humanity, etc.

Of course, they also raise some new questions from time to time.

"Mr. Fokherini, are all the streets in Dar es Salaam so clean?"

"Of course, we in East Africa take hygiene very seriously, not just now, but also as far back as my grandfather's time in East Africa."

"My grandfather told me that East Africa was not safe in the early days. Many people had a weak sense of hygiene at that time. However, the government had already begun to enforce personal and public hygiene, and the effect was very significant."

"I think everyone has heard that Africa is a cursed continent, with all kinds of tropical diseases rampant. However, we in East Africa have greatly reduced the spread of the virus in East Africa. Now East Africa is even safer than many mid- and high-latitude areas."

If Focellini's words were said to other people, they would not easily resonate with them, but it is different for Brazilians.

The latitude of Brazil is similar to that of East Africa, and the climates of the two countries can be said to be very similar, so some problems that exist in East Africa also apply to Brazil.

There is no doubt that Brazil's poor medical and sanitation systems, as well as the rampant tropical diseases, are probably one of the reasons for Brazil's unsatisfactory population growth and the concentration of population in large cities.

After all, just think about it, a country like Brazil, which has a small population, a vast land and a sparsely populated area, and cannot concentrate national forces to develop the inland through administrative means like East Africa in the past, is indeed difficult to develop.

Expecting private enterprises to bring hundreds of employees to the inland to open up wasteland is simply a matter of life and death. It is only because there were enough Indians in Brazil in the early days and enough blacks to exploit it later that Brazil would not have been able to accumulate even the wealth it has today.

After all, Brazil abolished slavery in the late 19th century, and by that time East Africa had effectively developed its territory to millions of square kilometers. Today, the economy and population in the west have also grown. This is the institutional superiority of East Africa.

Of course, East Africa's consumption of black slaves is obviously also very prominent, but not necessarily more than Brazil's consumption. After all, the black people in Brazil have been updated for several generations and are following the path of sustainable development, while East Africa does not pay much attention to "sustainable development" and adopts the means of "draining the pond to catch all the fish".

In this regard, the black community in Brazil is both lucky and unfortunate compared to their East African "compatriots". At least Brazil did not kill them all. However, the treatment of blacks in East Africa and Brazil is obviously not as good as that in the United States. Although American blacks are discriminated against by society, at least they gained freedom in the middle of the last century. Now that Brazilian blacks have just been liberated, their social status is not as good as that of American blacks.

Of course, Fokherini would not reveal this "stain" to his international friends, so in Fokherini's words, East Africa has almost no disadvantages, only advantages.

Many Brazilians also believe it. After all, the facts are there, and people are more willing to believe what they see. East Africa shows its civilized side, so East Africa is more civilized, richer, and more powerful than Brazil. It is simply an "ideal country."

(End of this chapter)