African Entrepreneurship Records

 Chapter 668 It all takes time

Ernst: "Try not to interfere with Matabele Province militarily. The railway department must prepare in advance, especially for the two Portuguese colonies. If a war breaks out, Mozambique and Angola must be completely removed from the map. Get rid of it and completely open up the land channel between the two oceans in East Africa and the West."

After all, for East Africa, Portugal's two colonies are more important than the current Cape Town. With these two colonies, more than half of East Africa's defense and security problems will be solved. At the same time, the economy, transportation, industry, etc. will also be improved. Better conduct nationwide layout.

"No matter when the enemy starts the war, we must set a time point. After this time point arrives, we must completely solve the problem of Portugal. At that time, we will take the initiative just like when we attacked the Transvaal Republic." Ernst Then he said.

 “Then when is this time node chosen?” Felix asked.

After thinking for a while, Ernst said: "At present, we in East Africa are vigorously developing the economy, so the war cannot have a great impact on the production work across the country, especially now, against the backdrop of the foundation of East African industry and infrastructure."

 The economic development of East Africa has now transitioned from chaos to reasonable order, because East Africa is a new country, and unlike the systems of most countries in the world, there is no target for reference.

Coupled with the fact that East Africa’s own talent training started relatively late, the bureaucratic group in East Africa has less experience in governing the country than other regions in the world. It can even be said that there is no governance experience.

 Hence, the early industrialization process in East Africa was very chaotic and needed to be adjusted. This fact actually caused huge damage to the economic development of East Africa throughout the 1970s. However, this is also a stage of social development that East Africa must go through.

 At present, the East African government has been able to slightly catch up with the world average level in terms of economic development after more than ten years of hard work. It is precisely because of this that East Africa has not been rash and radical.

For example, in the 1970s, if East Africa had a good foundation, Ernst could directly launch a large number of projects to achieve complete industrialization in East Africa.

 Because during the economic crisis of 1873, technology, industry, machinery, and other elements for industrial development could all be obtained from Europe.

 The reality is that East Africa simply could not do this at that time. The reason was the lack of talents and sound systems.

This is just like the industrialization of the Far Eastern Empire in the previous life. Soviet experts taught them step by step. At that time, the illiteracy rate in the Far Eastern Empire was so high that Ernst could imagine how tired the Soviet people were. Even highly educated intellectuals needed to learn Russian alone. How many misunderstandings will be caused by translation problems?

The situation in East Africa is slightly better, that is, the popularization of compulsory education in Germany is relatively good. Therefore, the German immigrants to East Africa basically have primary school literacy. In addition, due to the promotion of German education in East Africa and literacy, even older people in the Far East are currently Immigrants or Slavic immigrants can also write a few German words. As for speaking and listening, there is no problem at all. After all, it is basically difficult to survive in East Africa without German. This is a survival skill that must be mastered.

 Being able to speak German has nothing to do with cultural level. It is closely related to the language environment. If you stay in East Africa for a long time, you will naturally lean toward German and eventually be assimilated.

 The achievements of compulsory education in Germany spilled over to East Africa, so that basic exchanges between East Africa and the German region were unimpeded. This was also an important reason why East Africa was able to connect some German industries in the 1970s. Of course, this is also closely related to the fact that East Africa accepted many mature industrial workers from Germany, Austria-Hungary and the United States at that time. This is especially reflected in the development of the steel and railway industries.

However, the upper limit of East Africa was there at that time. Now East Africa is making up for these shortcomings, especially the development of education. Although the level of compulsory education in East Africa is low, it is large in volume. There are many people studying abroad every year, and even more have returned to China in recent years. For several years, this has provided the foundation for the development of the automobile and electric power industries in East Africa.

 In addition to these, the most important thing is the infrastructure construction work in East Africa. Railways, roads, bridges, and national water conservancy projects are all progressing steadily.

In other words, East Africa is now in an important period of economic transition. It is transforming from an agricultural country to an industrial country and is laying a solid foundation for industrial development.

Ernst said: "The major projects in East Africa now are the Hessian railway and the national water conservancy project. The progress of the national water conservancy project is not bad, but the project volume is large and the construction period is slow. It will take four to five years. The project volume of the Forest Railway is not small, but the most important thing is the difficulty of the project."

The Hessian Railway is a tropical railway, but many of the areas it passes through are tropical rainforests. East Africa has already seen how difficult it is to build railways in tropical rainforests. The main problem is the natural disasters caused by rain. Even more than ten tons of steel can be directly destroyed. Water washes away.

Therefore, the first priority in the construction of the Hessian Railway is to "control water". For this reason, the Hessian Railway needs to build three times more railway bridges, culverts, and drainage channels than all previous railways in East Africa combined. In addition, the Mitumba Mountains Because tunnels need to be built on some sections, the construction difficulty of the Hessian Railway is unique in the history of East Africa.

Of course, compared to the difficulty of the Hessian Railway and the Siberian Railway, the Siberian Railway is still more difficult, because there is only one Siberian Railway, and there are many railways built in the tropical rainforest area, but the Hessian Railway in East Africa is the longest, but there are only Less than a fifth of the Siberian Railway.

"These two projects should be completed at about the same time. After they are completed, we will be able to liberate most of the manpower, force and financial resources, so it is best to start a war at that time. It is now 1884, and the national water conservancy project should be completed by It can be completed before 1890, and the Hessian Railway should be completed earlier, so we set the time at 1890."

Ernst continued: "There are still at least five years in between, and Mozambique and Angola cannot remain unchanged. As far as I know, the transformation of Maputo Port should have been completed, and the Portuguese should build other defense projects later. Consider Considering their shortage of manpower, they should focus on deploying defense centered on the city."

“So you must understand the military deployment and fortification system of the Portuguese in their two colonies within the next few years.”

"And we also need time to complete military adjustments. This time will take at least two or three years. The Portuguese will not act alone. If they want to take the initiative, they must at least be consistent with the British. Therefore, judging the Portuguese's troop dispatch At this time, the main thing is to be wary of military changes by the British in South Africa.”

"Now the British have only more than 20,000 troops in South Africa, and the rest are mainly Transvaal people. The Transvaal Restoration Army has absorbed many Orange troops. These troops must also be integrated, so the British People also need preparation time.”

“We mainly pay attention to whether the British will mobilize troops from outside the region to enter Cape Town. If a large number of troops enter Cape Town, it means that the British cannot wait any longer.”

 (End of this chapter)