African Entrepreneurship Record

"Our country's railway system has many components, and the departments and enterprises are quite complex, including large state-owned railway companies, self-built railways by mining area companies, urban railways, regional railways, other types of enterprise-specific railways, agricultural area-specific railways, etc."

"The summary feature is that there are many large and small railways, difficult management, difficulty in connecting railways to the grid, and many other reasons. The national trunk railway network is okay. It is mainly small railways, straight railways, etc. and the trunk railways are not closely connected."

“Among them, mining area railways are the most typical, and their railway construction is limited by resource distribution, especially in the south and central regions.”

"The national trunk railway is the main artery of the East African railway network, while the branch lines and other types of railways are the capillaries. The primary problem facing East Africa now is that the connection between the capillaries and the main arteries is not smooth, which leads to blood, that is, logistics and passenger flow in economic development. Scheduling is inefficient.”

These problems reported by the Ministry of Railways are all objective facts. In fact, among the railway systems of various countries, East Africa is already relatively good. The railway management of the European economic powers is the most sophisticated and the density is relatively high.

The worst thing is the American railways. Although there are a huge number of railways in the United States, they are completely capital-oriented. There are more than a thousand railway companies alone. In the absence of a unified and powerful management organization, these large and small railway companies are seriously fighting each other. .

Railways are not only related to economic interests, but also related to national defense, transportation, social and other fields. European countries such as Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for example, focus on the military use of railways and emphasize national control, and are not entirely economic-led.

Therefore, based on the long-term development of the railway system, the fundamental thing is to improve the efficiency of railway utilization and simultaneously meet the needs of economy, society, transportation, national defense and so on.

To improve railway utilization efficiency and avoid resource waste, a coordinating agency is needed to lead the balance and coordination of various railway uses.

Ernst asked Andre: "What are the Ministry of Railways' suggestions on how to improve my country's railway utilization efficiency?"

Andre took out the plan and introduced it to Ernst: "Your Highness, as mentioned before, information exchange is an important means for the railway system to further improve its potential."

"Although the East African railway network is relatively developed, poor connections and communication between various nodes, or the inability to reach an agreement, will seriously hinder the improvement of railway utilization efficiency."

"Suppose a steel factory in Mbeya City produces 20,000 tons more steel every year due to technical reasons. However, due to the lag in recording information in the original railway system, these raw materials cannot be transported, which will inevitably have a negative impact. How to structure the railway system Perfect information exchange can perfectly solve this problem.”

"The current mainstream communication methods in the railway system are letters, telegraphs, radios and telephones. Letters are the slowest in efficiency, while telegraphs and telephones have the highest usage rates. However, telegraphs and telephones are also subject to line constraints, such as a flood disaster that causes a regional power outage. , thus causing the communication between the two stations to be lost, which may easily lead to a regional collapse of the railway system.”

"So ensuring multiple information communication methods and establishing a unified information processing platform are the main goals of our Ministry of Railways at the moment, including vigorously promoting the popularization of radio, a device that is less restricted by terrain, as a second means of communication for the railway system."

"A unified information processing platform can be used to sort out my country's railway system, reduce intermediate links, and effectively respond to large-scale railway system collapse events."

To put it simply, the Ministry of Railways wants to build a national independent railway communication system. In fact, similar systems existed in the past, but it was mainly a defense railway communication system for military lines, which played a huge role during the South African War.

The importance of national defense is self-evident, but the majority of railways are still in the economic and people's livelihood fields, so the new communication system mainly serves the economic and people's livelihood fields.

"If it is a new construction, will it cause a waste of resources?" Ernst asked.

Andre explained: "Our idea is not to rebuild a separate line, but to transform and upgrade the existing railway communication system. The existing communication system can be reused, but it will be further optimized. Newly constructed lines will definitely exist. But it only supplements it, accounting for less than 20%.”

Ernst nodded and said: "If that's the case, then this plan should be feasible. Don't rush to transform it first. You should conduct further research and inspection to ensure that nothing goes wrong before proceeding with the construction. This is a major matter related to the entire railway system. You cannot be greedy. Even if it cannot be completed within the First Five-Year Plan, it can be implemented in the Second Five-Year Plan.”

Andre nodded and said: "We have the same idea. After all, our construction tasks are also very heavy now. It is still relatively difficult to complete the construction of the new 50,000 kilometers of railway during the First Five-Year Plan, so we will definitely not be able to come up with more energy."

In the decade of the 1990s, railway construction in East Africa barely reached 90,000 kilometers, so the 50,000-kilometer railway construction task has taken up most of the energy of the current railway system.

Of course, this goal is not difficult to achieve. After all, compared with the 1990s, the productivity level of East African railways has definitely improved significantly.

Andre continued: "In addition to the communication system, our second plan is to build a number of new marshalling yards in railway hubs and important economic production areas across the country to improve the efficiency of material allocation."

"Railways are not as flexible as roads, so many materials need to be redistributed uniformly and sent to corresponding areas through marshaling yards. In this regard, East Africa is worse than Europe."

"Europe has a high railway density, dense population and cities, high economic development level, and large freight volume, so the railway utilization efficiency is also high. However, many cities in East Africa are built later than railways, which further increases the difficulty."

The development speed of cities in East Africa is too fast, so the demand for industries and materials in many cities has increased significantly, and the development of cities will naturally put forward higher requirements for the transportation industry, which makes the original transportation and regional economic development levels mismatched.

This large volatility will naturally affect the utilization efficiency of East African railways, and it cannot be eliminated at all. After all, there is a lot of uncertainty in urban and regional economic development, especially in industrial and mining cities.

This requires the East African railway system to make continuous adjustments according to the fluctuation range to minimize the impact, which is actually a happy trouble.

After all, countries like Japan, which have only a few thousand kilometers of railways, are not qualified to encounter such troubles as East Africa.

For a railway powerhouse like East Africa, railway management is also the most difficult, especially when the railway structure in East Africa has not stabilized. After all, Ernst's medium- and long-term goal is to build about 300,000 kilometers of railways, and the current railway mileage in East Africa has not reached half of this goal.

The only thing that can be confirmed is the construction of trunk railways. Trunk railways mainly serve the national transportation and are less affected by various factors, but branch railways are not necessarily, because of various factors, their construction is very uncertain.

"The ultimate goal of the railway department is to achieve the connection of national railways, so as to achieve unified management of the railway system from top to bottom. In this way, information and resources can be fully utilized to ensure the overall smooth operation of my country's railways and realize the reasonable allocation of railway freight and passenger transportation. In this way, the utilization rate of the entire railway system will be greatly improved."

"This railway network will promote the national railway to progress towards more standardized, efficient, and reasonable goals. While ensuring the number of railway construction in my country, it will enhance the quality of railway construction and provide better services for the development of the national economy."

Ernst certainly supports this. Only by adapting to the development needs of the economy and other fields can the potential for the development of East African railways be guaranteed and the sustainable development path of East African railways be supported.