African Entrepreneurship Record

The subtle thoughts of Kagela City officials were naturally understood by Constantine, but he did not voice them, as he had already completely relinquished government affairs; it was better to leave such matters to his son to handle.

Constantine’s assistant timely interrupted, ”Regarding these issues, I will make the necessary records and report them to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince. However, do not get your hopes up too much; currently, many places in East Africa, including Kagela City, are in the same situation, with numerous cities even in the Central Province waiting in line.”

The number of industrial cities in East Africa is very limited, and agricultural cities are even less prioritized, so many agricultural cities needing machinery have to wait in line.

However, whether or not it bears fruit, it’s worth trying a few attempts; after all, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince can hardly turn a blind eye to the local demands!

”We in Kagela City are aware of the current difficulties facing the country, so we were thinking whether it might be possible to procure the relevant equipment from overseas. However, such a situation is unprecedented in East Africa, so we just have to inquire.” said the Mayor of Kagela City.

With East Africa’s limited industrial capacity, attention could be turned to Europe and America, especially the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, which have competent machinery for agricultural product processing.

”Is your city’s budget sufficient?”

As an agricultural city, Kagela City’s fiscal resources should not be very abundant following general logic.

However, the Great Lakes Region, being an early key development area of East Africa, has one data point that stands in favor compared to other parts of East Africa: a large population.

In the entire Great Lakes Region, just the West Great Lake Province and North Lake Province alone have a population exceeding over three million (excluding Black people), so in terms of population density, the Great Lakes Region can be compared with the eastern coastal plains.

And with a large population, even if the per capita output is low, a relatively considerable data volume can be amassed, so although it is an agricultural city and a Prefecture-level City mainly focused on grain cultivation, Kagela City’s fiscal revenue is higher than some ordinary industrial cities.

”In recent years, due to water engineering projects, our city has indeed been financially strained, but now that the projects are in their final stages, from next year onward, more funds can be utilized for the development of other industries.”

As the Great Lakes Region is an important grain production base in East Africa, water conservation projects in this area commenced the earliest, and with the continuous efforts to transform the local environment, water projects in Kagela City are now nearing completion.

While the projects were underway, Kagela City’s agriculture had already started reaping the benefits several years ago, the most obvious being newly developed expanses of farmland.

Currently, international grain prices remain at a low level, though somewhat better than in the 70s, as prices began to recover by the end of that decade.

On one hand, reductions in production by countries such as the US and Tsarist Russia, and on the other, the consumption of a large part by East Africa’s domestic engineering projects and population growth.

However, it was not these major grain-exporting countries that suffered the most from the plunge in grain prices but rather the Far East Empire far away.

Coinciding with the last economic crisis, the northern Far East Empire also experienced significant disasters, with droughts and famines affecting thirteen provinces and tens of millions of people.

Despite the severe losses, the situation for this iteration of the Far East Empire is somewhat better because earlier, East Africa absorbed a considerable population, thus preventing the disaster from reaching the tens of millions as in the previous life.

This famine, which spread across the northern Far East Empire, also facilitated East Africa’s highest export levels of grain to the Far East Empire in the 70s, barely recovering some costs during the agricultural crisis era.

Due to the Huaihai Economic Zone, the Far East Empire somewhat developed industries and mines in the north, benefiting East Africa naturally; it mostly included coal mines and textiles.

The loan business was more significant, though limited to the Huaihai Economic Zone, as East Africa, unlike armed colonization, held less sway before the Far East Empire compared to countries like Britain and France.

”Starting from five years ago, many parts of East Africa had begun transitioning to planting cash crops, with more grain crops concentrating in several major grain-producing bases, and in this larger context, Kagela City has been continuously expanding its farmland area.”

East Africa’s agricultural production has become increasingly standardized, and suitable crops are accordingly planted in different regions. The area of rice cultivation in the Great Lakes Region, in particular, far exceeds that of the eastern coastal plains, indicating the region’s development limits.

Grain farming is generally considered a less promising undertaking, a consensus increasingly recognized; however, the Great Lakes Region’s future development should not be underestimated, though Kagela’s resources aren’t abundant, the resource potential of the two Great Lake Provinces is considerable, especially the western areas near Hesse Province.

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Bujumbura City, capital of the West Great Lake Province.

After departing Kagela City, Constantine’s next stop was Bujumbura; as the capital city, Bujumbura is relatively remote in its positioning within the entire West Great Lake Province, situated at the southwesternmost corner.

Yet choosing it as the capital of the West Great Lake Province has its rationale; this can be discerned from its name.

The name of the West Great Lake Province is naturally derived from being west of the Great Lake (Lake Victoria), while Bujumbura belongs to the Soron River Basin (Lake Tanganyika Basin).

East Africa’s three major lakes—the Great Lake, Soron Lake, and Malawi Lake—aren’t far apart on the map, distributed sequentially from north to south.

Given such proximity, the East African government has naturally considered the idea of connecting the three lakes’ shipping routes; practically, by constructing canals to connect the rivers in the three lake basins, this idea holds some feasibility.

However, for East Africa at present, this is unfeasible, primarily due to technical and economic issues.

For instance, the most feasible realization between the Great Lake and Soron Lake; the primary water source of the Great Lake, the Kagela River, navigable channel, is less than seventy kilometers from Soron Lake.

Yet the alternative solution is the Mubu Railway (from Mwanza to Bujumbura).

”The Mubu Railway crosses the Kagela River, and the upstream navigability of the Kagela River is too poor, mostly characterized by mountainous and hilly terrain, a common feature of major East African rivers; hence, after considering various factors, the combined water-rail transport approach is the only option available to facilitate cargo transport between Soron Lake and the Great Lake.”

”This issue isn’t limited to just our West Great Lake Province but also relates to the transport issues between the northern industrial belt and the Central Three Provinces.”

”The closest route from the Central Three Provinces to the northern industrial belt is clearly a diagonal line on the map, but this line crosses mountains, rivers, and more importantly, Soron Lake and the Great Lake.”

”We know that Soron Lake’s depth reaches several hundred meters, indicating it is impossible to cross via bridges or similar means; even with technological advancements, accomplishing this within a century remains out of reach, and the Great Lake’s area is too vast to construct a bridge, such a project scale would span across countries in Europe, indicating it’s better to construct a long road along the lakeshore.”

”That essentially detours the route, leaving water transport as the unavoidable option. This is Bujumbura City’s goal, to become a bridge between the Soron Lake coastal economic zone and the future Great Lake coastal economic zone.”

”Our preliminary goal has been accomplished, establishing a station upstream of the Kagela River navigable route, allowing Bujumbura’s goods to be transported via the Mubu Railway and transferred onto our province’s water transport to finally reach Kisumu City within only half an hour; we cannot achieve this transport line alone, the best solution is to create a city similar to our Bujumbura on the southern coast of Soron Lake to connect the Central Three Provinces.”

On this point, East Africa fares much less fortunately than the United States, which has plains surrounding the Great Lakes, while the terrain between the three major lakes of East Africa is much more complicated, preventing East Africa’s shipping routes from forming a network.