Chapter 504 Borrowing People
April 1879.
Western Great Lakes Province, Bujumbura City.
As the capital of Western Great Lakes Province, Bujumbura is built on the shores of Lake Solon (Tanganyika). March and April coincide with the onset of the long rainy season.
This year’s rain has come very quickly. The annual precipitation in Bujumbura City usually ranges from 800mm to 1000mm, but this year it exceeded 2000mm, and even exceeded 3000mm in some areas. Most of the raging river water followed the river. It is discharged into Lake Solon, but there are still many areas where the river water cannot outpace the collection speed of rainwater, flooding large areas of farmland on both sides of the river.
This made Najin, a senior official of West Great Lakes Province, very worried. He frowned and said: "The rainfall in West Great Lakes Province this year is a bit excessive. We have received reports from many places. In the area close to Hesse Province in the west, the rainfall is even At one time it reached 130 millimeters a day, and precipitation in most areas of the province exceeded the peak. This year’s grain production is planned to be I am afraid that the project will be greatly damaged.”
Western Great Lakes Province consists of all of Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and parts of Congo. Therefore, the flood disaster in West Great Lakes Province has spread over a wide area, including the provincial capital. On the contrary, Jumbura was not severely affected, while other areas, especially rainy areas, suffered greater losses.
However, Bujumbura is not serious. It is also for other places in the Western Great Lakes Region. Bujumbura is actually located in an area with less rain in normal times. Now even Bujumbura is Jumbura was hit by the disaster, and one can imagine the situation in other areas.
"Your Excellency, there is no way to do this. Natural disasters are uncontrollable. We can only try our best to recover the losses and dredge the rivers in the province to prevent floods from flooding more farmland. For rescue and disaster relief in the province Implementation should also begin,” the assistant said.
The assistant's words brought Najin's thinking back to solving the problem. He smiled bitterly and said: "Yes! Now is not the time to complain. You should immediately organize personnel to conduct statistics on this disaster, and the grain depots in various places will do a good job. Be prepared, be ready for disaster relief at any time, and the health department should not take it lightly. As the saying goes, there will be a big epidemic after a big disaster, so do a good job in disinfection..."
Najin arranged the disaster relief tasks in an orderly manner. As a province with abundant rainfall, West Great Lakes Province will encounter this kind of abnormal increase in rainfall every few years, so it has seen more and has richer experience in dealing with it.
Correspondingly, the provinces surrounding the Great Lakes region, including North Lakes, South Prussia, and Plateau, were also affected by this heavy rain. However, heavy rain in these areas is not a bad thing, especially in Plateau Province. Normally there is less rainfall, but now that the floods are coming, the animals on the Galenseti grassland are living a more moist life.
The entire Great Lakes region was affected by the disaster, and a reduction in grain production this year became inevitable. The news was quickly uploaded to the central government.
Ernst: "The Great Lakes region is the second largest grain production base in East Africa. The disaster in the Great Lakes region will have a great impact on the national grain output this year. It seems that we need to speed up the engineering transformation of the Great Lakes region."
In recent years, coastal plain areas have experienced The construction of water conservancy projects, especially in the Central Province, has built many water conservancy projects, including excavation of canals, renovation of farmland irrigation systems, river management, construction of reservoirs, etc., which has greatly stabilized and improved grain production in the coastal plain areas, ensuring harvests during droughts and floods, exceeding The Great Lakes region regains its No. 1 spot.
Constantine: "Are you going to put the same set of measures on the coast in the Great Lakes region?"
Ernst: "The natural conditions in the Great Lakes region are much stronger than those on the coastal plain, even better than those in France. The natural conditions are even better, but infrastructure is lacking, otherwise the level of agricultural development in the Great Lakes region should surpass France.”
In terms of agriculture, France is really far ahead. Although the United States is also very strong, The agriculture in the United States is very rough, and most of it relies on the accumulation of huge arable land. According to the average level, France is better, especially the arable land in France was not snatched from the Indians like in the United States. The living standards of French farmers It is also generally higher.
The land in East Africa has the same origins as the United States, and agricultural development is not as good as the two. Fortunately, East Africa is located in the tropics, which has made East Africa’s tropical agricultural economy developed, avoiding competition with many temperate countries, and can Competing with East Africa is nothing more than Brazil and Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is not developed at all now, and Brazil is relatively turbulent and chaotic, not as politically stable as East Africa. Of course, Brazil's first-mover advantage cannot be ignored, but East Africa is rapidly erasing Brazil's first-mover advantage, and the way East Africa narrows the gap is to build water conservancy projects.
Water conservancy projects can be large or small. East Africa can solve this problem according to its own needs. While Brazil may be able to handle small-scale water conservancy projects, its capacity for large-scale water conservancy projects is far inferior to that of East Africa. After all, the Brazilian government is not as strong as the East African government, so large-scale water conservancy projects cannot be avoided. It would be too difficult for the big landowners to occupy land and let the Brazilian government bribe them.
Ernst said to Constantine: "The government has nothing big to do now, and many inland areas have not been developed, so this time we simply follow the coastal plain water conservancy project construction model across the country and conduct major repairs. Water conservancy project. "
Constantin thought for a while and said: "This project is a bit big!"
Ernst: "Father, it doesn't matter, I didn't think about it all at once. Complete, after all, the level of development in Africa is too low, and it is probably only a little better than Oceania among the continents in the world. While we still have plenty of black people, we can do more large-scale projects to narrow the gap with other continents. "
Most areas in East Africa can be said to have entered agricultural society for the first time after being merged into East Africa. Many places can be said to have maintained the original appearance of the earth, so East Africa wants to develop the land. , the difficulties encountered were formidable.
However, the natural conditions in East Africa are relatively good. As long as these lands are developed, they can produce good agricultural returns, so Ernst thinks it is a very profitable business.
However, if East Africa wants to catch up with those regions that have developed for thousands or hundreds of years in a short period of time, it must make huge sacrifices. Fortunately, there are a large number of black people in East Africa, and East Africa can pass on these negative factors to the black people. On the other hand, if Ernst had not come from a later generation and knew that colonization would come back to bite him, Ernst would have really wanted to keep these black people as objects of exploitation.
Constantine: "Okay, now that we have decided, let's implement it!"
Ernst nodded, and then went to arrange this matter. He has experience in coastal water conservancy projects, This time Ernst directly asked the two big brothers, Germany and Austria, for help.
Residential construction and water conservancy projects also require professional talents. This time Ernst planned to build water conservancy projects across the country, and the talent gap needed was not small, so he simply borrowed some people from Germany and Austria to guide the construction of water conservancy projects across East Africa. Work.
In response to East Africa's request for help, the German and Austrian governments directly agreed. Borrowing some manpower was not a big problem, just treating East Africa as a favor.
With the contact between the two governments, East Africa invited more than 200 water conservancy technical experts from the two countries at once to come to East Africa to guide the construction of water conservancy projects.
For this water conservancy project construction, Ernst planned to directly launch a saturation attack. In twenty years, he would complete the path that other countries had taken for hundreds of years and pave the way for the agricultural development of East Africa.
(End of this chapter)