African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 998 Bella City

Beira City.

Beira is quite special in the national positioning of East Africa. It is one of the central cities in the southeast coastal area, connecting the two important ports of Dar es Salaam in the north and Maputo in the south.

In the past decade, Beira has been the fastest growing city in East Africa, and now the total population of Beira has exceeded 300,000. As the fastest sea route for Bohemian industrial products and Lorraine Industrial Zone (Zimbabwe and eastern Botswana), Beira almost undertakes most of the goods trade of the central industry.

The new mayor of Beira, Kelta, said: "At present, the city's economic level is constantly rising. It has become the country's first export port for important materials such as sugar, tobacco, copper ore, and machinery in the central region. Among several coastal cities in the east, it is second only to Mombasa, Dar es Salaam and New Hamburg. During the First Five-Year Plan, our city's industry and economy will definitely surpass New Hamburg and become the third largest city in eastern East Africa."

Relying on the Central Industrial Zone, Beira City is likely to become or surpass a big city like Mombasa or Dar es Salaam in the future, because the industrial level of the Central Industrial Zone currently ranks first in East Africa.

Neither Dar es Salaam nor cities such as Maputo in the south can effectively compete with the Port of Beira. In fact, due to the rise of the Port of Beira, some goods that used to belong to Zambia and southern Congo are more willing to be exported from the Port of Beira. Therefore, the rise of Beira is indeed the greatest threat to Dar es Salaam.

In the past, there were a large number of countries in East Africa. For various reasons, these countries could not reach an agreement on transportation construction, and generally built transportation networks with their capitals as the core. This also made transportation cooperation among African countries very weak and easily affected by factors such as politics and war.

The establishment of East Africa has undoubtedly eliminated this sense of regional division, which is also an important factor in Bella's rapid rise.

Kelta said: "Thanks to the rapid development of Beira Port in the 1990s, Beira is now one of the important industrial cities in the country, which is beneficial for our city to compete with other cities in the First Five-Year Plan."

"Before 1903, our goal is to at least surpass the Port City of New Hamburg and secure our position as the third largest city on the eastern coast. On this basis, our city's population will exceed and the scale of industry will increase by at least percent."

"With the help of the first five-year plan, we will further develop our city's petroleum and chemical industries and become an inland supply center for petroleum and chemical raw materials."

With the rise of the oil and chemical industries in East Africa, most of the coastal cities in East Africa have gained new opportunities for development. The industrial areas in central East Africa do not produce oil, so oil can only rely on imports or northern East Africa.

Bela is the port for importing oil to the central industrial zone. The oil resources of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Romania and Russia will first arrive at the Port of Bela and then be transported inland by rail.

Therefore, relying on this advantage, during the First Five-Year Plan, the East African Central Government prepared to deploy a larger-scale oil industry in the Port of Beira, mainly in the two aspects of refining and storage and transportation, producing petroleum products including fuel, lubricants, petroleum wax, petroleum asphalt, petroleum coke, etc., and at the same time providing corresponding production raw materials for petrochemicals.

The development of the oil industry in Beira is closely related to the central industrial zone. Without the huge energy demand of the central industrial zone, there would be no need to go to great lengths to deploy related industries in Beira.

This is easy to understand. Without industry, the demand for energy would naturally be small. In the past, the Far Eastern Empire went from an oil exporting country to the largest oil importing country due to industrial development.

Today, in the energy sector, coal still holds the dominant position, but East Africa has begun to develop large-scale energy sources such as oil and natural gas, and has surpassed the United States in this field, ranking first in the world. Against this backdrop, important coastal cities such as Beira have more or less vigorously explored the potential of the oil industry, injecting new blood into East African industry.

Of course, the world's three major oil producing areas are the United States, Europe and East Africa. East Africa has ranked third in the world in terms of production, but it still imports a large amount of oil from abroad. This shows how much importance the East African government attaches to the oil industry.

Kelta: "The oil industry is expected to become an important industry in the 20th century, just like the power industry. Currently, the power industry has played a huge role in countries around the world, driving the development of a large number of related industries and becoming one of the important symbols of industrial development in various countries."

"With the development of internal combustion engines and the chemical industry, the prospects for the oil industry are very bright. Oil has become the second largest energy source in East Africa after coal. Therefore, the development of the oil industry is the focus of East Africa in the future. Our city must seize the opportunity to become an important center for oil refining and by-product processing in the country."

Compared with East Africa, the demand for oil in other countries in the world is not that large at present. Therefore, the fact that oil is the second largest energy source in East Africa is not true in other countries. The usage may even be lower than that of natural gas, because the history of large-scale application of natural gas is earlier than that of oil. Because a lot of natural gas comes from by-products of coal mining, the natural gas industry was formed relatively early along with the development of the early coal industry.

During the first industrial revolution in Britain, the natural gas industry was formed and became the main energy source for Europe's lighting industry.

Kelta: "In addition, during the First Five-Year Plan, in addition to building a state-of-the-art oil refinery, our city will also innovate its steel industry, upgrade the equipment of the Beira Steel Plant, build a Beira Coal Washing Plant, Beira Second Pharmaceutical Plant, Fifth Power Plant and other enterprises, and connect with the aluminum industry in Xindai Town to develop aluminum product processing, etc."

In the 1990s, the pharmaceutical industry in Beira City became relatively developed through cooperation with German chemical and pharmaceutical companies. So on this basis, East Africa focused on strengthening the local pharmaceutical industry, but it still mainly focuses on exports.

From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, many chemical and pharmaceutical companies were inseparable, and the strongest country in this field was Germany.

Of course, the pharmaceutical industry is in a relatively chaotic state these days, and many medicines are not effectively inspected and regulated, especially psychotropic drugs, which are most likely to contain illegal ingredients from previous lives. Just as people do not have a comprehensive understanding of the hazards of radioactive substances, most people in this era do not have a comprehensive understanding of these substances.

What really made Europe, and even the whole world, realize its harm was the final result after its extensive use by the military during the two world wars.

Therefore, although the East African government strongly supports pharmaceutical companies in Beira, it is quite cautious about using them in the domestic medical system. However, this does not prevent the pharmaceutical industry from making huge profits. East African countries use them with caution or even ban them, but have no psychological burden about exporting them. And because they are as addictive as tobacco, many drugs are basically not worried about sales when exported.

In addition to manufacturing, aluminum product processing was also a key industry in Beira during the First Five-Year Plan. East Africa has already laid out an electrolytic aluminum industry in the town of Shinde at the mouth of the Zambezi River. An important reason for the construction of the fifth power plant in Beira is to provide electricity support for the town of Shinde. The two cities are developing collaboratively. If the leading city of Tete is included, it will be a collaboration among three places.

The town of Xindai has a short development history in the province, and the electrolytic aluminum industry has a huge demand for electricity, so there is a large electricity gap. In this case, it is very important to "borrow" electricity from nearby cities of Beira and Tete. Tete is rich in coal resources, so the cost of power generation is low. Beira, as an important port city, is convenient for the import of coal from India and southern East Africa. It also has a large population and a strong industrial base, so its power generation capacity is relatively abundant. Therefore, the two places can provide part of the electricity gap for the town of Xindai.

(End of this chapter)