Chapter 1228 Inland Water Transport - Bell Port
While the immigration project was being carried out in the northeast of the Great Lakes region, the cities along the Great Lakes, especially the port cities, were not idle either.
The focus shifts to Kampala and Entebbe in April 1916.
Kampala is now the seat of the provincial capital of North Great Lakes Province in East Africa, while Entebbe is the capital of the former Kingdom of Buganda and is now the second largest city in North Great Lakes Province in East Africa, only twenty years away from Kampala Many kilometers away.
As for the third largest city in the North Great Lakes Province, it is not on the coast of the Great Lakes, but on the coast of Lake Albert in the previous life. There are many in the North Great Lakes Province, except for the most famous Lake Victoria and Lake Albert in the previous life. Lake Kioga, Lake Wamala, etc., are among the largest lakes in the world based on their water area alone.
It's just that it seems a bit insignificant in front of the many outstanding giant lakes in the Great Lakes Group of East Africa.
So the North Great Lakes Province, which was centered on the territory of Uganda in the previous life, can definitely be regarded as the "land of plenty" in East Africa. Lakes, rivers, plains, hills and mountains complement each other. In the agricultural era, nothing could be better than here. land.
The two cities of Kampala and Entebbe are located on this fertile and fertile land.
Take the city of Kampala as an example. In the previous life, Uganda was called the Pearl of the East African Plateau by the British, while Kampala was called the "Pearl of Pearls".
Although the value of the pearl has seriously depreciated because the British talked too much, the double certification can also prove the British's high hopes for the land of Uganda.
In fact, if you look at the historical origins, Kampala once served as the capital of the Buganda Kingdom. After all, Kampala and Entebbe are very close to each other.
Kampala City, Port Bell.
Engineer of the East African Laguna Port Research Institute, Rob Kertz is directing workers to transform Bell Port.
This middle-aged man, who has more than 20 years of experience in port construction and renovation in East Africa, guided the various persons in charge of the construction site with drawings.
“The complete transformation of Bell Port must be completed by July next year, and before the Xingguo Reservoir begins to fill, the silt on the periphery of the original port area will be cleaned up.”
"So everyone must take active action. This is a big project. The excavators and earth-moving trucks must coordinate well. First, clean up the silt and dry soil from the bottom of the lake and along the coast."
Bell Port also It is the name of Kampala City Port, which is only about ten kilometers away from Kampala city.
The construction of the Xingguo Reservoir will inevitably cause the water level of the original Great Lakes to rise. As a result, many of the original Great Lakes ports in East Africa will be affected, and even some small fishing ports in the northeast may be submerged by the lake water.
So the transformation of Bell Port is, on the one hand, the need for the growth of freight logistics in Kampala City, and on the other hand, it is to cope with the water level changes after the construction of the Xingguo Reservoir.
Robucts continued: "To summarize the preliminary work, it is to dig deeper, widen, and increase the size to build the prototype of the future Bell Port, so as to build an excellent deep-water port along the Great Lakes."
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“In addition, the port will add advanced equipment such as container cranes and transform the port’s containerized logistics system. This will greatly increase the logistics efficiency of Bell Port.”
“Improve Kampala’s position in the country As the core transportation hub of the Lake District, the last construction of Bell Port has It was 1898, and now Bell Port is far from meeting the logistics and shipping needs of Kampala.”
“After all, in the last century, we could not have imagined that the East African economy would grow so fast and the logistics system would grow so fast. Something like the container revolution happened.”
"Nowadays, most ports in the country can be said to have reached the point where they must be transformed to adapt to the changes in technology and social production in the new era." "According to the instructions of the provincial government, this round of expansion of Bell Port must be in accordance with the highest standards. Implementation to ensure that the port can be maintained in the future and even thirty years "
Here we can see the great ambition of the East African government. The Great Lakes (Lake Victoria) has always been the most developed water transport area in East Africa, and the development of the economic belt along the lake is obviously centered on the Great Lakes. , closely connecting coastal cities through water transportation.
Port construction is the most important part of this. Taking advantage of the opportunity of the construction of Xingguo Reservoir, the water level of the Great Lakes will rise, and the water level of the entire Great Lakes will rise by two to three meters, which will further strengthen the shipping conditions in the Great Lakes area.
Of course, the shortcomings of the Great Lakes area are also obvious, that is, there is no direct outlet to the sea, and you need to go to the sea from Mombasa by rail.
This is obviously part of the calculation of the East African government, that is, the National Canal Plan. In the National Canal Plan, the water networks of the Great Lake (Lake Victoria) and Lake Solon (Lake Tanganyika) have been opened. connection, and the artificial river channel eastward through Lake Solon can directly reach the eastern coast of East Africa.
Although it takes a long circle, this also means that ships starting from the Great Lakes can reach the Indian Ocean unimpeded.
In fact, with the help of the national canal system, ships from the Great Lakes region can also reach the Atlantic Ocean in the future.
There is no doubt that the national canal plan in East Africa is a pretty crazy project, and the cost of completing this project is that after 1915, there were only about 800,000 black slaves left in East Africa, and millions of black slaves worked for the canal plan in East Africa. Counting the early East African Grand Canal plan and the construction of water conservancy projects across East Africa, nearly five million black people "may" have paid the price with their lives for water conservancy construction in East Africa.
In fact, the official statistics of East Africa are about 2.6 million, but due to the completion progress and implementation differences, the number should be far higher than the official statistics of East Africa.
From this aspect alone, Ernst's "great achievements" are no longer something that can be evaluated in the reincarnation of Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty, but "a man who is better than his master". Opold II can be compared with Americans, Portuguese, French, Spanish, British...
It seems that there are not many innocent people among the great powers and many European countries.
In this time and space, Leopold II had no room for maneuver, but there should be millions of natives who died at his hands. As for Americans, Ernst was relatively worse. After all, almost all of the United States could be seen. There are not many Indians in sight, and there is no need to say more about other great powers. Without tens of thousands of lives on hand, it is simply impossible to become an industrial power in the 19th century.
Moreover, the nature of Ernst is somewhat different from that of them. Leopold II and the Americans and other great powers were "massacres" in the true sense, while in East Africa this was "just" normal engineering losses.
Even if these projects are not carried out by black slaves, the East Africans will definitely suffer huge losses. This is the price of development, so there is no problem with "normal" losses, but there are people in East Africa to replace them. East Africa's own citizens bear these costs.
But now East Africa can be regarded as "receiving its own consequences". After using black slaves, projects in East Africa can basically only be borne by its own citizens.
However, the difference is still very big. Needless to say, there is no need to say more about the salary. It can be said that the engineering team under Robkotz is very well-equipped. There is no shortage of excavators, bulldozers, cranes, and transportation vehicles.
The heavy engineering equipment that has emerged in recent years is the real confidence that East Africa dared to completely eliminate black slaves during the "Fourth Five-Year Plan" period.
With the development of the automobile and machinery industries, coupled with Ernst's guidance in the general direction, and the unremitting efforts of East African scientific researchers, many engineering equipment from previous lives naturally appeared in the world earlier.
Take excavators as an example. As early as the end of the last century, Ernst had already begun the research and development of hydraulic excavators. After nearly two decades of hard work, hydraulic excavators are now finally It has been realized that it can be mass-produced and used in actual production.
The emergence of this small construction machinery can be said to be a complete technological revolution in engineering construction. At least in Ernst's opinion, its importance is no less important than the internal combustion engine and electric power. and other technological changes.
(End of this chapter)