African Entrepreneurship Records

Chapter 1080 National Canal Plan

Yasted: "There are many problems in my country's water conservancy construction, especially the unreasonable planning of some early projects, which has caused some ecological and environmental disasters, leading to economic losses, such as the Ancarena Reservoir embankment breach in 1876. , causing hundreds of casualties and destroying some farmland and villages.”

The incident of the Ancarena Reservoir breach was obviously not as light-hearted as Yarsd described. The actual casualties were thousands, but the casualties of black laborers were not counted in East African statistics.

The Ancarena Reservoir is a large reservoir planned in the early stages of East Africa. It is actually relatively feasible technically. The main problem was that during construction, flooding occurred due to miscalculation of weather conditions. At that time, the Ancarena Reservoir had not yet been completed, and the workers were stationed far away. The river beach was too close, which caused subsequent problems.

In the early days, East Africa's grasp of domestic hydrology was obviously not as complete as it is now, and many reasons such as relatively backward technology and insufficient training of professional teams led to this tragedy.

According to the consistent practice of the East African government, such large-scale water conservancy construction projects obviously require a large number of black workers, so many black workers sacrificed in this disaster. For this kind of sacrifice, the East African government will not even shed crocodile tears. One drop, but it will get worse.

Just listen to Yasted continue to say: "However, in general, our country's water conservancy construction has brought huge benefits to the country. Some problems are not worth mentioning in the face of huge economic and social benefits. Therefore, in the next ten years, our country should pursue more With high goals, we will further improve the level of water conservancy facilities across the country, improve national transportation accessibility, and provide better services for the construction of my country’s industry, agriculture and urban areas.”

"One is to further transform and upgrade existing water conservancy facilities across the country to solve a series of problems caused by lack of awareness and lack of technology in the past."

"The second is to further develop our country's inland water transportation network. In addition to developing a number of new canals, we must also upgrade the existing canals. With our country's past economic development, the population, urban and industrial scale have greatly increased, which also means that With the huge increase in logistics volume, the originally designed navigable canals are no longer able to meet the current needs of my country's industrial and urban development, so some canals need to be deepened and widened on the original basis."

“On the basis of the East African Canal, we have accumulated rich experience, and on this basis we have developed a more scientific and macro-scale national water transport network, covering most of the country’s water systems and lake systems, and realizing the serial work of inland water transport across the country. "

"The third is to dredge and manage major rivers across the country to protect the ecology of our country's rivers and reshape the adverse impacts on the environment."

There is no doubt that any of the three proposals of the Ministry of Water Resources will require huge manpower, material and financial support. Of course, if it can be completed, the benefits to East Africa will be obvious.

The key to completing the above proposal is black labor. East Africa’s idea of ​​eliminating black labor has not changed from beginning to end, and now there is still a lot of room for development in terms of the number and age of these black laborers.

Seven million people are required to complete the plan of the East African Ministry of Water Resources. Once these three points are completed, it is estimated that all black people in East Africa will be basically consumed.

The first is the upgrading of the original national water conservancy facilities. The construction of East African water conservancy facilities has accumulated many problems, mainly in early planning and construction. Technology, personnel, and domestic industrial capabilities have made the East African government make many compromises, so just completing this is Not easy.

The second point is that the canal plan in East Africa is the most exaggerated. According to Yasted, the East African government is no longer satisfied with the current national water transportation system.

As we all know, East Africa's talent in water transportation is far less than that of Europe, the Far Eastern Empire and the Americas, the world's major economies. Although East Africa has been working hard for more than half a century, the gap with these countries or regions is still relatively significant.

Therefore, the East African government hopes to form a usable and effective canal system throughout East Africa through huge manpower transformation to further reduce East Africa's logistics costs and establish logistics advantages for competition between East Africa and other major economies.

In this regard, railways and roads in East Africa are no worse than other countries. Only water transportation has always been East Africa's biggest regret. Yasted said: “In the past few decades, through long-term demonstrations and inspections, our Ministry of Water Resources and other departments have gained an in-depth understanding of the national water system, climate, topography, topography, etc., and have carried out long-term water conservancy construction work. We have accumulated rich experience and lessons, coupled with the training of domestic professionals. On the basis of these, our Ministry of Water Resources and the Ministry of Transport have formulated a draft national canal system development plan. "

"That is, through the construction of 48 large canals across the country, with an estimated total length of 2,730 kilometers, the national water transportation system will be improved."

"Once this plan is realized, my country's inland water transportation will completely achieve a qualitative leap. Although the national water transportation conditions will not reach the level of the Far Eastern Empire and Europe, they will surpass those of the United States. The cost of my country's inland water transportation will be greatly reduced, and Further complementing an important link in national transportation.”

The characteristics of Europe, the United States and the Far Eastern Empire are that they have large areas of plains with criss-crossing rivers, forming a developed inland water transportation network. Moreover, these countries and regions have iconic rivers that represent their own water transportation. In Europe, they are the Rhine River and Danube River, and in the United States, they are The most representative of the Mississippi River and the Far Eastern Empire is the Yangtze River.

On the other hand, in East Africa, although there are world-class rivers such as the Congo River, the Nile River, the Zambezi River, and the Orange River, the shipping value is limited by terrain, and breaking this limitation can only be achieved through artificial transformation.

The canal plan in East Africa is obviously crazy. According to the experience of the East African Grand Canal, at least three million workers must be sacrificed to complete the national canal plan in a short time.

The East African Grand Canal in East Africa is more than 1,000 kilometers long, with a construction period of approximately thirteen years. The construction length of the National Canal Plan is almost 2.5 times that of the East African Grand Canal, which is almost equivalent to the Sui Dynasty Grand Canal in the Far Eastern Empire.

The Grand Canal in the Sui Dynasty was more than 2,700 kilometers long. It took millions of people six years to complete it, and at least two million people died.

Looking at it this way, the construction of the East African Grand Canal in East Africa is not as good as that of the Sui Dynasty. After all, East Africa only built half of the Sui Dynasty's projects at almost the same cost of human life, and with far superior technology and tools than the Sui Dynasty. It took twice as long as the Grand Canal of the Sui Dynasty.

This is actually easy to understand. Even when East Africa was building the East African Grand Canal, East Africa far surpassed the Sui Dynasty in terms of technology and tools. However, this advantage was not obvious, and in the end it still had to rely on a large amount of manpower to complete the project.

At that time, although East Africa was able to produce tractors, cars and other modern engineering construction tools, the output was pitiful and it was not invested in canal construction at all.

It can be said that the East African Grand Canal was completed step by step under the suppression of East Africa by black laborers using hoes, shovels and other tools.

Moreover, the conditions for canal construction in East Africa at that time were not as good as those of the Sui Dynasty. The East African Grand Canal mainly connected the Zambezi and Congo River systems, and these two areas were not fully developed at the time, which was especially true along the East African Grand Canal.

The area that the Sui Dynasty Grand Canal passed through was basically the core economic area of ​​the Sui Dynasty at that time, and most of it was located in plain areas, which to a certain extent saved construction costs and risks for the construction of the Sui Dynasty Grand Canal.

In contrast, many of the East African Grand Canal projects, especially those in the Congo River Basin, have to pass through dense virgin jungles, or increase the difficulty of construction in order to bypass unfavorable terrain such as valleys and ravines.

(End of chapter)