African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1228 Inland Water Transport - Bell Harbor
While the immigration project was being carried out in the northeast of the Great Lakes region, the cities along the Great Lakes, especially the port cities, were also not idle.

Our attention turns to the cities of Kampala and Entebbe in April 1916.

Kampala is now the capital of the North Great Lakes Province in East Africa, while Entebbe was the capital of the former Buganda Kingdom and is now the second largest city in the North Great Lakes Province in East Africa, only more than 20 kilometers away from Kampala.

As for the third largest city in the Northern Great Lakes Province, it is not on the shore of the lake, but on the shore of Lake Albert in the previous life. There are many lakes in the Northern Great Lakes Province, except for the most famous Lake Victoria in the previous life, Lake Albert, Lake Kyoga, Lake Wamala, etc., which are all large lakes that can be ranked among the best in the world based on the water area alone.

It just seems a bit insignificant compared to the many outstanding giant lakes in the East African Great Lakes.

Therefore, the Northern Great Lakes Province, with Uganda's territory as its core in the past, is definitely the "land of fish and rice" in East Africa. Lakes, rivers, plains, hills and mountains complement each other. In the farming era, there was no better land than here.

The cities of Kampala and Entebbe are located on this fertile and rich land.

Take the city of Kampala for example. In the past, Uganda was called the Pearl on the East African Plateau by the British, and Kampala was called the "Pearl among Pearls".

Although the value of the pearl has depreciated seriously because the British said too much, the double certification can also prove the high hopes that the British have for the land of Uganda.

In fact, if we look into the historical origins, Kampala was once the capital of the Buganda Kingdom. After all, Kampala and Entebbe are very close.

Port Bell, Kampala.

Rob Katz, an engineer from the East African Neihu Port Research Institute, is directing workers to renovate Port Bell.

This middle-aged man, who has more than 20 years of experience in port construction and renovation in East Africa, was guiding the various persons in charge of the construction site with a blueprint.

"The entire renovation of Bell Harbor must be completed by July next year, and the silt outside the original port area must be cleaned up before the Xingguo Reservoir begins to store water."

"So everyone should take positive action. This is a big project. The coordination between excavators and earthmovers should be done well. First, the silt and dry soil on the bottom of the lake and along the shore should be cleared out."

Port Bell is the name of the port of Kampala, which is only about ten kilometers away from the city of Kampala.

The construction of the Xingguo Reservoir will inevitably lead to the rise of the water level of the original Great Lakes. As a result, many of the original Great Lakes ports in East Africa will be affected, and even some small fishing ports in the northeast may be submerged by the lake water.

Therefore, the transformation of Bell Port is, on the one hand, a need for the growth of freight logistics in Kampala, and on the other hand, to cope with the changes in water levels after the construction of Xingguo Reservoir.

Robcotts went on to say, “To sum up the preliminary work, it is to deepen, widen, and enlarge the port to create the prototype of the future Bell Port, so as to build it into an excellent deep-water port along the Great Lakes.”

“In addition, the port will add advanced equipment such as container cranes to transform the port into a containerized logistics system, which will greatly increase the logistics efficiency of Bell Port.”

“To enhance Kampala’s status as a core transportation hub in the Great Lakes region, Port Bell was last built in 1898. Today, Port Bell is far from meeting Kampala’s logistics and shipping needs.”

"After all, in the last century, we could not have imagined that the East African economy would grow so fast and that the logistics system would undergo the container revolution."

"Most of the ports in China now have to be renovated to adapt to the changes in technology and social production in the new era." "According to the instructions of the provincial government, this round of expansion of Bell Port must be carried out in accordance with the highest standards to ensure that the port can maintain normal operations in the future and even in the next 30 years."

The East African government's ambition can be seen here. The Great Lake (Lake Victoria) has always been the most developed area of ​​water transportation in East Africa, and the development of the lakeside economic zone is obviously centered on the Great Lake, closely linking the coastal cities together through water transportation.

Port construction is the most important part of this. Taking advantage of the opportunity of Xingguo Reservoir construction, the water level of the Great Lake will rise. The water level of the entire Great Lake will rise by two to three meters, which will further enhance the shipping conditions in the Great Lakes area.

Of course, the disadvantages of the Great Lakes region are also obvious, that is, there is no direct access to the sea, and it is necessary to take the railway to go to the sea from the city of Mombasa.

This is obviously also within the calculations of the East African government, that is, the National Canal Plan. The National Canal Plan has opened up the water network connection between the Great Lakes (Lake Victoria) and Lake Soron (Lake Tanganyika), and the artificial waterway to the east through Lake Soron can directly reach the eastern coast of East Africa.

Although it takes a long detour, this also means that ships can reach the Indian Ocean unimpeded from the Great Lakes.

In fact, with the help of the national canal system, ships from the Great Lakes region will be able to reach the Atlantic in the future.

There is no doubt that the national canal project in East Africa was a very crazy project, and the cost of completing such a project was that after 1915, there were only more than black slaves left in East Africa, and millions of black slaves died in the canal project in East Africa. Including the early East African Grand Canal project and the construction of national water conservancy projects in East Africa, "possibly" nearly five million black people paid the price of their lives for water conservancy construction in East Africa.

In fact, the official statistics in East Africa are around 2.6 million, but in order to complete the progress and execution differences, the number should be far higher than the official statistics in East Africa.

From this aspect alone, Ernst's "great achievements" are no longer something that can be evaluated by the reincarnation of Emperor Yang of Sui, but rather "the disciple is better than the master". Such achievements can only be compared with Leopold II in his previous life and the Americans, Portuguese, French, Spanish, British...

It seems that there are few innocent people among the great powers and many European countries.

In this time and space, Leopold II has no room for maneuver, but the number of indigenous people who died at his hands should be in the millions. As for the Americans, Ernst is still relatively worse off. After all, there are almost no Indians in the entire United States. There is no need to say much about other powers. Without tens of thousands of lives on their hands, it would be impossible for them to become industrial powers in the 19th century.

Moreover, the nature of Ernst's case was somewhat different from theirs. The attacks by Leopold II, the Americans and other powers were a true "massacre", while those in East Africa were "just" normal engineering losses.

Even if black slaves were not used to carry out these projects, the East Africans would certainly suffer huge losses. This is the price of development. So there is absolutely no problem with "normal" losses. It's just that someone in East Africa has borne these costs on behalf of the East African citizens.

However, East Africa is now reaping the fruits of its own labor. After using up the black slaves, projects in East Africa can now basically only be borne by its own citizens.

However, there is still a big difference. There is no need to say much about the treatment. The engineering team under Robcotts can be said to be very well-equipped, with excavators, bulldozers, cranes, and transport vehicles.

These heavy engineering equipment that have emerged in recent years are also the real basis for East Africa to dare to completely eliminate black slaves during the "Fourth Five-Year Plan" period.

With the development of the automobile and machinery industries, coupled with Ernst's guidance in the general direction and the unremitting efforts of East African scientific researchers, many engineering equipment from previous lives naturally appeared in the world earlier.

Take excavators for example. As early as the end of the last century, Ernst had already begun to plan the research and development of hydraulic excavators. After nearly twenty years of efforts, hydraulic excavators have finally been able to be mass-produced and used in actual production.

The emergence of this small piece of engineering machinery alone can be said to be a complete technological revolution in engineering construction. At least in Ernst's opinion, its importance is in no way inferior to the changes in technologies such as internal combustion engines and electricity.

(End of this chapter)