African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 983 Pilot Area
Speaking of the city of Mombasa, its development has indeed far exceeded Ernst's expectations, but it is normal if you think about it carefully.

The economic development of Mombasa mainly relies on the Northern Railway, while the western part of northern East Africa has no access to the sea, but is close to the colonies of Belgium, France and other countries.

This means that the entire northern railway is top-heavy and its foreign trade relies almost exclusively on the port city of Mombasa.

On the other hand, Dar es Salaam faces much more competition on the Central Railway where it is located. Bagamoyo and New Hamburg Port can all get a piece of the pie, especially after the East African railway network becomes increasingly sound. The ports of Beira, Cabinda, Benguela, Luanda, etc. can all bypass Dar es Salaam.

The most important thing is that many routes are even lower in cost than Dar es Salaam. Unlike Mombasa, which almost monopolizes most of the import and export business in northern East Africa, Mogadishu, Kismayo and Lamu Port in the north cannot compete with Mombasa and can only serve a very small area.

Land transportation obviously cannot form a competitive advantage over sea transportation. Moreover, except for the Abyssinian Empire, none of East Africa's northern neighbors is a big deal, and the economic level of the colonies in West Africa is even worse.

Of course, although Dar es Salaam does not have the monopoly advantage of Mombasa, it is still the fastest access to the sea for most parts of the East African Plateau, so the East African government always attaches great importance to Dar es Salaam.

The proposal of the Dar es Salaam urban agglomeration actually reflects the fact that the development of Dar es Salaam has entered a bottleneck period.

As the most developed city in East Africa, Dar es Salaam faces resource constraints such as population, land, and transportation. Cities such as the First Town City not only have land and population, but also have fairly complete infrastructure construction, which can undertake industrial transfer from Dar es Salaam.

As the capital in the past, the First Town City may not be "interested" in Dar es Salaam's industries. But now that it has lost its capital halo, the location of the First Town City is not favorable in the whole of East Africa, so cooperation with Dar es Salaam seems very reasonable.

As for why an urban cluster is not established in Mombasa, the main reason is that Mombasa does not have the conditions for this. There are no decent cities around it, which is consistent with Mombasa's characteristic of being the only dominant city in the north.

The situation is different in the area around Dar es Salaam. Although Bagamoyo is only a medium-sized city, its industrial output value is nearly half of that of Mombasa. Although the industries in First Town and Soga are not well developed, their education and scientific research strengths should not be underestimated, and they can provide more talent reserves and technical support for regional development.

The teaching and scientific research resources of the entire Coastal Province are also one of the main reasons for the birth of the Dar es Salaam urban circle.

After East Africa invested the resources originally belonging to the First Town City and Soga City into Rhine City, the education and scientific research industries in the First Town City and Soga City were actually in a half-dead state.

To reactivate these resources, there must be industrial support, which is exactly what the First Town City and Soga City lack.

Although the scientific and educational resources of First Town and Soga are close to being abolished after a large amount of resources were divided up by Rhine City, we cannot underestimate the strength of the two places because of this.

For example, in the Far Eastern Empire's previous life, if 70% of the teachers and students of the two universities, Tsinghua and Peking University, were taken away, it is impossible for anyone to say that the remaining 30% were not impressive. It was just that the original system was difficult to operate due to the large-scale loss of personnel.

The goal of the East African central government now is to keep the remaining 30% running, preferably to achieve a phoenix-like rebirth.

Ernst said: "In the past, the development of Dar es Salaam was restricted to a certain extent, especially in the fields of education and scientific research, which were highly mismatched with the economic status of Dar es Salaam."

“Industry development is inseparable from talent and technology reserves, especially the development of emerging industries has higher and higher requirements for talent. Among them, Mbeya is the best, and it is a model of the combination of science, education and industry in East Africa. If it were not for the highly developed science and education, Harare would have surpassed Mbeya long ago to become the most developed city in inland East Africa.” As the capital of Bohemia Province (Zimbabwe), Harare ranks first in East Africa in terms of heavy industry scale and is also the largest city in inland East Africa. However, its industrial value is far less than that of Mbeya.

Mbeya is currently the scientific research center of East Africa, and is relatively weak in education. Previously, Soga City ranked first in education.

After Rhine City split the education of First Town City and Soga City, Rhine City has become the national education center of East Africa, and this advantage will continue to expand.

“Therefore, the industrial transformation of Dar es Salaam is inseparable from the explosion of science and education. Dar es Salaam itself cannot achieve this, but the First Town and Soga City have it, which has formed the integration and optimization of resources.”

“At the same time, the First Town and Soga City also need the industrial resources of Dar es Salaam, which can alleviate the pressure on land, transportation and population in Dar es Salaam.”

That is to prevent big city diseases. Dar es Salaam is the most typical big city in East Africa, with an urban population of over 700,000. This places high demands on urban land, drinking water, social security, education and medical resources, etc.

Of course, this does not mean that East Africa should completely restrict the development of large cities. One of the functions of cities is to save public resources and reduce vacancy rates.

Take the former first town for example. Although it is small in size, there is serious waste in urban construction. Especially now that the population has decreased significantly, a large number of buildings and land are idle. The land and population pressure in Dar es Salaam is relatively tight, so the two can complement each other.

Of course, each urban development model has its own advantages and disadvantages. Big cities have their advantages, and small cities have their advantages. The urban agglomeration is an attempt by the East African government in the East African First Five-Year Plan.

That is to say, through the urban agglomeration model, the advantages and disadvantages of large cities and small cities can be combined. If this approach is feasible, the focus of urbanization in East Africa in the future will definitely be on the construction of urban agglomerations.

As an emerging country, the focus of the East African government's work has completely shifted from agricultural construction to industrial construction. Correspondingly, transforming the original agricultural population into urban population is what the East African government must do.

The increase in urbanization rate means the increase in urban population. In this process, urban construction is the key. The small city model is obviously not feasible. Only large cities and urban agglomerations are feasible.

It is impossible to require every region in East Africa to develop an urban agglomeration, such as a place like Mombasa where there are few cities around it. If the Dar es Salaam urban agglomeration experiment is successful.

In the next step, East Africa will build the Rhine City Cluster in the middle with Rhine City as the center, and the West Coast City Cluster in the west.

This is also Ernst's main purpose. Industrial development is most taboo to go it alone. Without division of labor and cooperation, large-scale industrial production activities cannot be formed.

The construction of urban agglomerations also requires East Africa to further refine the regional transportation network based on the national transportation infrastructure framework. This also represents the beginning of a new round of infrastructure construction in East Africa, just like a tree first grows a trunk before it can further flourish.

In fact, during the construction of roads and railways in East Africa in the 1990s, the construction of branch lines had reached the same scale as that of trunk lines. Today, except for water transportation, the trunk lines of East Africa are relatively complete, and what is lacking is the construction of branch lines.

(End of this chapter)