African Entrepreneurship Records

Chapter 818 Maputo Railway

  The city of New Hamburg.

 October 29, 1889.

As the war subsided, East Africa's construction of the south was also put on the agenda. The first was to build a railway from the New Hamburg Port City to Maputo, connecting Maputo with other cities in East Africa by railway.

 This is the simplest way to connect Maputo to East Africa. It only requires building a railway of less than 400 kilometers to connect Maputo, the former capital of the Mozambique colony, to the East African railway network.

Of course, Maputo’s location will definitely lead to the construction of an east-west railway in the future, which will shoulder the important task of exporting to the sea in the central province of Matabele and other provinces.

However, Matabele Province is not actually very interested in Maputo. Their priority is the Beira region in central Mozambique.

Beira was one of the important seaports in Mozambique in the past. It is located due west of Matabele Province and is the fastest route to the sea in Matabele Province.

Maputo is too far south for Matabele Province, and is not the best option for Hechingen Province, with the Drakensberg Mountains blocking the two.

On the contrary, the terrain between New Hamburg Port City and Hechingen Province in the south is relatively flat, and the central railway is less difficult to build, while the connection between Maputo and the interior of East Africa can only wait until the future.

The iron ore in New Hamburg Port City is mainly imported from other places, which is similar to most coastal cities in East Africa. With the re-opening of sea routes after the end of the South African War, cheap iron ore from India and the Middle East is obviously cheaper than from inland.

 This is a kind of historical inertia, just like the capital of German East Africa did not move from Bagamoyo to Dar es Salaam. In previous lives, Bagamoyo may have been the most economically developed region in mainland Tanzania.

His economic role is rather secondary. Just like Mozambique in its previous life, Maputo is located too far south. If it is not the political center, it can at most radiate to the southern plains of Mozambique.

 As far as current conditions are concerned, the East African Navy is actually most interested in Maputo. They are preparing to concentrate the naval power of the New Hamburg Port City to the Maputo area.

On the more than 300-kilometer road from New Hamburg Port to Maputo, black railway workers can be seen everywhere. They wear simple work clothes and use sledgehammers to knock on the rivets at the joints of the rails.

As a technical type of work, even black railway workers need to be trained, so this group of black railway workers were actually brought here from the east, rather than just recruiting a group of black slaves from the local area to start work.

These rails are all produced by the New Hamburg Port City Steel Plant. As an important coal base in East Africa, New Hamburg Port City is also one of the important steel production bases.

The reason why Maputo became the Portuguese military fortress in the Western Indian Ocean is that its location is self-evident and its port conditions are unique on the entire eastern coast of East Africa.

 In the fields between New Hamburg Port and Maputo Port, the railway tracks are neatly laid out on the grass. The distance from New Hamburg Port to Maputo is not long, and the terrain is very flat, so it is not difficult to build the railway.

There are more than 200,000 black railway workers in East Africa, and they are basically front-line workers. Excluding black people, there are actually only 150,000 informal railway workers in East Africa.

Of course, a large number of temporary workers will be used during railway construction, and East Africa cleverly allocates these floating types of work to black labor to maintain the stability of East African railway employees.

This situation is very common in East Africa, and it also makes some skilled black people stay in East Africa longer, but the number of casualties is also relatively high. The number of employees in the East African railway system alone exceeded the number of workers in the Far Eastern Empire at the same time, and it was one of the symbols of East Africa's basic industrialization.

Of course, the large number of railway workers in East Africa is related to the fact that railway is a pillar industry in East Africa, including the steel industry, electric power industry, machinery manufacturing, military industry, etc.

However, there is still a huge gap compared with European and American countries. In European and American countries, especially in Western Europe, the industrial population has overtaken the agricultural population, while East Africa is just in its infancy.

At present, the number of workers in East Africa exceeds one million. This is mainly due to the policy changes in East Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the siphoning of unemployed people in Germany and the United States during the economic crisis, which allowed East Africa to quickly shorten the gap between it and developed countries. gap.

 This is similar to how the Soviet Union achieved industrialization with only two five-year plans during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Historical opportunities are very important.

However, the economic crisis of 1873 obviously cannot be compared with that world-wide crisis and cannot be a springboard for East African industry. So far, the industrial population in East Africa accounts for about 5% of the national population, and that is not close to 20 million. This is a conservative estimate in the case of black people, so the industrialization of East Africa still has a long way to go.

Of course, according to the current size of East Africa, about 5% is about two to three million people, which is larger than the total population of some countries in the world. This is an effective proof of the so-called "bigger is stronger" theory. .

 In the previous life, India was a "world power". Although its economic level was poor, under the Five Permanent System, India was the world's largest country in terms of national power. Moreover, with the decline of Britain and France, India may not have more advantages than India.

Of course, if you look deeply into India's combat effectiveness, many countries in East Asia are definitely much stronger than India. Ernst has never doubted this. If Vietnam goes to war with India, both countries might be able to fight without using nuclear weapons. A fifty-fifty one.

This is not nonsense, but considering the national character of Indians. As a typical tropical country, Indian society’s social efficiency is basically maintained at the same efficiency level as Africa and Southeast Asia. Among tropical countries, the most efficient is Singapore, followed by Vietnam.

 It is difficult to cheer up in a humid and humid environment. This is very obvious in parts of East Africa. The most typical ones are the Nile Basin and the Congo rainforest.

For example, why Juba, the capital of the Nile River Province, has become a military training ground in East Africa is not because the environment is superior, but because it is too difficult.

 An army that can maintain daily training in Juba will be able to exert stronger combat effectiveness in places with more difficult conditions in the future.

  After all, the environment in the southern Nile Basin is too hot and humid, and the entire region is like a "steamer". It would be very difficult to live in this environment for 365 days.

Although East Africa is a tropical region, the climate in most areas is mainly dry. For example, the first town in the capital has occasional high temperatures in summer, but the humidity is not high, so it can barely be considered a livable area.

This is also reflected in the Nile Province. The strongest economic area in the Nile Province is the Gezira Plain in the north. The Gezira Plain and its surrounding areas have a typical tropical desert climate and are on the edge of the Sahara Desert, which is more suitable for agriculture. Production activities and industrial development.

The plateau areas of East Africa have obvious climate advantages, with naturally dry and moderate precipitation and evaporation, and flat and open terrain. The plateau areas with the eastern and central regions as the core are also the most densely populated and economically developed places in East Africa.

In the future, the plateau areas of South Africa, Mozambique, and western Angola will also be the focus of development in East Africa, and climate factors are one of the important prerequisites.

 (End of this chapter)