African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1239: Chapter 248: The World’s Largest Artificial Reservoir

Strictly speaking, calling Jezira City and Juba big cities is already overstating their economic status within East Africa; within the Nile River Basin, Jezira City and Juba rank first and second respectively, but looking at East Africa as a whole, the two cities at best belong to the category of medium-sized cities.

Nor has East Africa put much effort into developing the Nile River Basin; take agriculture as an example: agricultural development within the Nile River Basin is in fact inferior to that of several provinces on the Azande Plateau, and the Azande Plateau itself counts as one of the relatively backward areas of East Africa.

By contrast, the Great Lakes Region adjacent to these two areas is a completely different story: not only does its grain output firmly rank first in East Africa, its population and economy also stand at the forefront; the main problem facing the Great Lakes Region is relatively low per capita income, and this is closely tied to the relative lack of local industry.

In the past, East Africa’s investment in the Great Lakes Region was concentrated in agriculture, and industrial development naturally lagged far behind; this was purely a result of policy, and the current proposal to create the Great Lakes economic belt is, to a certain extent, a move to lift restrictions on industrial development in the Great Lakes Region.

As for the negative impact of local industrial development on agriculture, it is minimal and boils down to two aspects: labor and protection of arable land; after East Africa liberalized the free market, even without developing the Great Lakes economy, people would still have flowed into other regions, and as for farmland protection, it is still too early to be a real concern for East Africa at present.

At the moment, the total population of East Africa is just over 100 million; in terms of population density it ranks only in the middle among the great powers, and based on Ernst’s experience, given the current level of urbanization in East Africa and the rate of educational expansion, East Africa should instead be wary of a potential decline in fertility several decades from now.

However, Ernst is clearly not too worried about this issue; East Africa, after all, still has the status of an immigrant country, and the colonies that Ernst and the East African Government are now actively scrambling for overseas and around the homeland are themselves meant to play the role of population incubators in the future.

Moreover, in the short term, East Africa’s population is in the midst of the population surge typical of early industrializing countries, and by the 1930s and 1940s of this century, East Africa’s population base should be quite considerable.

Returning to the topic of reservoir resettlement, the final destination of the villagers of Yablon this time is Anton Leo Town in the Northwest, less than ten kilometers away from Jinga City.

”Up ahead is our destination on this trip, Anton Leo Town. I imagine you’re already fairly familiar with this place. The government has newly planned out a tract of land right in Anton Leo Town. I’ve heard this area is to be built into a new district of Jinga City, which means that in all likelihood you will become citizens of the future Jinga City,” Tarolin said, pointing at Anton Leo Town, where construction was in full swing.

They could see that a considerable number of new houses had already been started in Anton Leo Town, and judging from their specifications, they were clearly being built to urban standards.

This is easy to tell. Although housing in East African rural areas has improved quite a bit in recent years, there is still a fairly obvious gap compared with the cities.

The first difference is height: in East African villages, buildings of more than one story are very rare, whereas in Anton Leo Town most of the residential houses are three stories, with some even reaching four.

This is a fairly reasonable design in terms of number of floors, because according to official East African statistics, most people only begin to feel very tired when they climb to the fifth floor, and the fourth floor serves as a kind of dividing line—reaching this level feels just right.

Therefore, most urban residential buildings in East Africa at present are three or four stories; as for taller buildings, those also exist. After all, once the market was liberalized, housing construction standards naturally had to take market factors into account, and East Africa began to see more residential buildings with other numbers of floors.

The resettlement housing being built in Anton Leo Town for reservoir migrants is clearly still being constructed according to East Africa’s old standards, by a municipal construction team under Jinga City.

At present, East Africa still has a large number of state-owned enterprise construction teams, a legacy of the planned economy era, and they cannot be replaced in a short period of time.

Very soon, under the joint direction of Company Commander Tarolin and Mayor Ma Jin, the convoy stopped in the town center of Anton Leo Town. After the people were counted and verified again, they began assigning housing for the reservoir migrants.

Led by a staff member from the town government, they soon arrived in front of a row of houses that had just recently been completed.

”The resettlement compound has already been officially connected to water and electricity. Each household will be allocated one unit, including three bedrooms, one kitchen, and one bathroom. The community is equipped with trash bins, and all garbage must be placed in designated spots. I imagine this is the same as in your rural areas, so I won’t elaborate. As for the flowerbeds and green belts...”

From the town government staff member’s introduction, it was clear that the place had been built entirely according to East African urban standards, with all basic living facilities in place.

”As for employment, since only part of your village’s farmland lies within the inundation zone, the remaining land has now been incorporated into Luotian Village under Anton Leo Town. Your work will also be merged into the original state-owned farm of Anton Leo Town, while a small number of people will be assigned jobs in the urban area of Jinga City. The bus route from here to the city is already in operation, so there’s no need to worry about transportation.”

It is clear that the preliminary work for this resettlement had long been put in place and was not something that only began after the proposal of the lakeshore economic development strategy.

In fact, as early as the beginning of this century, Ernst had already anticipated the construction of the Xingguo Reservoir, which is the Owen Reservoir of his previous life.

The Owen Reservoir was built by capitalizing on Lake Victoria; relying on this advantage, it quickly became the largest man-made reservoir in the world. Of course, many people do not regard the Owen Reservoir as a normal artificial reservoir, since it is integrated with Lake Victoria.

Given that Lake Victoria, as the world’s second-largest freshwater lake, covers tens of thousands of square kilometers, calling it an artificial reservoir just by building a dam is indeed a bit self-deceptive, especially considering that the Owen Reservoir dam is only a little over thirty meters high.

That said, after the Owen Reservoir was completed, it did in fact raise the water level of Lake Victoria; subtracting the original volume of Lake Victoria, the newly added storage capacity still reached more than 200 billion cubic meters.

The Xingguo Dam built by East Africa is essentially a ”pirated” version of the Owen Reservoir dam from the previous life, and the Xingguo Reservoir itself is likewise a ”pirated” copy of the Owen Reservoir.

What does an extra 200-plus billion cubic meters of water mean? It is almost equivalent to the storage capacity of five Three Gorges Dams.

However, because the Xingguo Reservoir is based on the Great Lake (Lake Victoria), and the Great Lake already has a huge surface area, once the additional water volume is spread out, its effects are far less visually striking than those of the Three Gorges Dam.

After all, to make room for the Three Gorges, the Far East Empire in the previous life relocated more than 1.3 million people, whereas the number of reservoir migrants in this East African round is under forty thousand.

Take Yablon Village as an example: the reason it is being entirely relocated is mainly because the village is too close to the Great Lake and lies in a low-lying area, making it a fairly typical case, but by no means a common one.

For most villages along the shores of the Great Lake, at most some land will be submerged, and it may not even be farmland; the impact can be essentially ignored.

This is easy to understand. After the completion of the Three Gorges, the upstream water level rose by more than 100 meters, whereas the increase in the original Great Lake water level brought by the Xingguo Reservoir is only about three meters; moreover, the Great Lakes Region itself is shaped like a basin, with the Great Lake being the lowest point of this basin. Given the surrounding terrain of the lake, this also explains why the northeastern shore of the Great Lakes Region is most easily affected.

In fact, one can see this from the outlet of the Great Lakes Region—namely the Nile River: the overall terrain of the Great Lakes Region is lower in the Northeast; otherwise, Lake Victoria could not possibly be one of the sources of the Nile River.

Of course, even so, the construction of the Xingguo Reservoir is still undoubtedly a large-scale project in East Africa; after all, it also counts as the world’s largest man-made reservoir. Therefore, as early as 1905, Ernst had already begun directing the East African Ministry of Water Resources to build the Xingguo Reservoir based on the characteristics of Lake Victoria and the Nile River.

During the Third Five-Year Plan period, East Africa formally launched the preliminary work for constructing the Xingguo Reservoir, including building new embankments, establishing resettlement sites for migrants, setting up hydrological observation stations, and a whole series of other tasks.