African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1451: Chapter 19: East-to-West Water Diversion_3

Once the East-to-West water diversion project is completed, the last shortfall in southern development will also be addressed.

Yards said, ”This East-to-West water diversion will also become the landmark project of our Ministry of Water Resources in the Five-Five Plan, its significance is no less than the major strategies of other countries.”

During the Four-Five period, the landmark project for East African water utilization was the Xingguo Dam in the Great Lakes Region, raising the water level of the Great Lake by nearly two meters. Meanwhile, due to the construction of the Xingguo Dam, the area’s power generation capacity was enhanced, contributing to the rise of Jinga City and significantly improving the shipping conditions in the Great Lakes Region.

And naturally, the East-to-West water diversion project will become the landmark project of the Ministry of Water Resources during the Five-Five Plan period, and this project is expected to last for many years, as the Ministry of Water Resources’ expectation is to complete it within twenty years.

After the abolition of Black Slaves, the pace of construction projects in East Africa inevitably slowed down; if it were in the past, the Ministry of Water Resources might have completed this strategic project during the Five-Five Plan period.

In fact, during the transitional Era of completely ending the ”slavery” era, East Africa’s economic and social development showed quite a few problems.

Previously, due to a large number of cheap Black Slaves, East African projects were not afraid of casualties, and pursued the fastest methods, allowing East Africa to achieve numerous impressive accomplishments over the past half-century.

However, after the complete abolition of Black Slaves, East Africa could only hire domestic workers to complete various construction projects; unquestionably, the cost-effectiveness of domestic workers could not compare with ”slaves.”

It is only because mechanization rapidly spread in East Africa that it somewhat resolved East Africa’s ”slave labor dependency syndrome” in most industries.

However, it is only somewhat, because there are some production areas where cheaper labor is more advantageous, such as many plantations in East Africa, where various crops cannot achieve large-scale mechanized production for various reasons.

The most typical examples are cotton and rubber; cotton picking relies on manual labor. Even though East Africa already has related mechanical inventions, they cannot replace manual labor due to various drawbacks, such as machinery mixing impurities during cotton harvesting.

Rubber even more so, rubber cutting can only be done manually, after all, rubber comes from rubber trees and must have regular incisions made to allow repeated harvesting. Currently, East African researchers cannot think of a machine capable of harvesting rubber.

Cotton can still have related mechanical research and development, but rubber harvesting is entirely without a clue, since harvesting rubber isn’t as simple as cutting down trees.

Other cash crops face various problems as well, but according to the East African Government’s summary, ”slaves” were the most useful and almost omnipotent tool.

However, since East Africa has abolished the slavery system, it can only think of solutions from other aspects, apart from researching relevant machinery as much as possible, the East African Government’s solution also includes maintaining the cultivation of East African cash crops through subsidies, contracts, and other means.

In recent years, the strategy of transferring relevant agricultural production to colonies has been on the rise, such as planting rubber in colonies, then transporting it back to the mainland for processing, and finally exporting overseas.

Therefore, compared to the planting industry, water departments focusing on engineering are less affected by the end of slavery, and due to increased mechanization, their work efficiency has greatly improved instead.

However, if there was a choice, the Ministry of Water Resources would definitely support the continued use of ”Black Slaves” because in these special projects, people are still the most reliable.