African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1495: Chapter 36: Talent Recruitment_2

Don’t even mention those economically powerful cities with populations over a million—Kitwe can’t compete even with same-tier cities like Maputo or Benguela that have a similar population size to Kitwe.

As for Kitwe’s talent recruitment and cooperation efforts, the relevant universities and institutions in East Africa are quite welcoming. The film and television industry is still a small cake at the moment, but it has huge potential, so even Rhein City’s existing film sector isn’t afraid of competition.

Universities are even more straightforward about it: if students can secure jobs immediately upon graduation and receive government-level support, whichever way you look at it, that’s a good thing.

Nowadays, because the level of higher-education coverage in East Africa is relatively high, the ”value” of East African university students is far from being as high as that of university students in other countries.

After all, scarcity drives value. East Africa’s number of university students has long been the highest in the world, so it naturally can’t be like other countries, where higher education is completely monopolized by an elite stratum.

Kitwe Talent Recruitment Fair.

”Classmate, may I ask if you’re interested in coming to our Kitwe to build your career?” Deberne personally acted as staff at the recruitment fair, coming to recruit people right on the campus of Communication University.

”Where is Kitwe?” a university student asked.

You really couldn’t blame anyone for asking that. Kitwe’s name recognition in East Africa isn’t particularly high. After all, East Africa has close to a thousand cities, and Kitwe is only in the upper-middle tier, even ranking within the top hundred. But even so, calling Kitwe quite unremarkable wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

Although Kitwe bills itself as the second-largest city on the Copper Belt and even appears in East African middle-school geography textbooks, when people talk about the Copper Belt, the city that comes to mind as representative is still Lubumbashi. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

So Deberne patiently explained, ”Our Kitwe indeed isn’t very famous, but economically we’re not bad at all by national standards. You’ve probably heard of the Copper Belt, right? Our Kitwe is the second-largest city on the Copper Belt.”

”Now that you put it that way, I get it—the Copper Belt! The industrial zone where Lubumbashi is located,” the student said.

This left Mayor Deberne feeling a bit deflated, though it was perfectly normal. Lubumbashi is one of the country’s top ten largest cities and, at the same time, a provincial capital. That latter status alone is enough to give it considerable nationwide name recognition in East Africa.

Deberne said, ”Yes, we’re the city next door to Lubumbashi. But even though our city is right next to Lubumbashi, Lubumbashi is in Swabia Province, while our Kitwe belongs to Central Province.”

The reason he emphasized the latter was to avoid people assuming that the obscure Kitwe must be in some remote backwater, whereas Central Province is roughly East Africa’s equivalent of Zhili Province.

Of course, Central Province also has quite a few cities. Aside from Rhein City, whose status as East African Capital is the most special, the province includes large cities such as New Frankfurt City, Lusaka, and Kabwe.

Deberne continued, ”Kitwe is a relatively developed city economically, with a decent environment and fairly convenient transportation. Our city lies between Lubumbashi, New Frankfurt City, and Rhein City.”

”You should know that both Lubumbashi and New Frankfurt are cities with populations over a million and rank among the nation’s top ten in economic strength. Being situated between these two cities, our Kitwe’s economy naturally can’t be too shabby. It’s just that because our scale is smaller, we don’t stand out as much.”

”We’re only a little over a hundred kilometers from Rhein City; it takes just three hours by rail to get there...”

At this point, Deberne somewhat regretted not bringing a map of Central Province; it would have made it much easier for him to explain Kitwe’s situation.

A student asked, ”Is this recruitment fair organized by your municipal government? It’s not graduation season yet.”

Deberne said, ”Of course. I’m the mayor of Kitwe—here, this is my ID.”

As he spoke, Deberne pulled out his work ID to prove it, which really stunned the students of Communication University.

After all, this was the first time they’d seen a bureau-level cadre—especially a city mayor—personally standing out on the playground acting as recruitment staff, and doing so with such a friendly and approachable attitude.

Here you have to understand a concept: East African mayors come in different sizes. In East Africa, Prefecture-level Cities don’t have counties under them as an administrative tier, so below a Prefecture-level City it’s directly towns and town-level cities.

The mayor of a Prefecture-level City is a mayor, and the mayor of a town-level city is also a mayor, but clearly the ”gold content” of the two is not the same.

Deberne joked, ”If I weren’t who I am, your president probably wouldn’t even have allowed us in.”

”The reason our Kitwe is entering campuses ahead of time to run a recruitment fair is that our city is undergoing economic transformation.”

”Kitwe used to be a developed industrial city, but that also meant our industrial structure was fairly single-track. To pursue more diversified development, we need different types of talent to help us achieve that.”

”And one of our city’s key goals in the near term is to vigorously promote the development of the film and television industry, turning Kitwe into the fourth major film base after Rhein City, Mombasa City, and Dar es Salaam City—and possibly even East Africa’s very first dedicated film city.”

The big pie Deberne was sketching did indeed spark the interest of some students. After all, this was the National Media University; many majors here were not unfamiliar with the film and television sector.

”Mayor Deberne, is your city planning to shoot movies?”

”Does Kitwe have any well-established film and television companies?”

”If we go work in Kitwe, what kind of pay and benefits can we expect...”

Facing the barrage of questions from the surrounding students, Deberne patiently answered, ”It’s not just movies—we support documentaries, music, and anything else that can be captured by cameras and transmitted via electronic signals and is of positive value.”

”At the moment, Kitwe has a functioning TV station. The municipal government has already drafted plans to establish a film production company, and we’re also preparing to bring in some film and television enterprises to invest in Kitwe. So the employment outlook is broad.”

”As for pay and benefits—since Kitwe is supporting the development of the film and television industry, we’ll naturally tilt resources in its favor. And of course, if you—these favored children of the Empire—run into any difficulties in the future, you can come directly to me. I will definitely respond in a way that satisfies you...”

Of course, some people picked up on the subtext of what he said: Kitwe currently has no foundation at all in the film and television sector and is short on relevant experience, which made them quietly decide to back out.

But others felt this was a good opportunity. Lack of foundation isn’t necessarily a problem—none of them had left campus yet, and the thing they’d lack most after entering society would be opportunities.

After all, once you go into those already fairly mature companies and institutions, you may not get many chances to really spread your wings.

Now that Kitwe was offering a platform, with a bit of effort they might catch a ride on this tailwind and eventually soar into the sky.

”Mr. Mayor, roughly how many people do you need?”

Hearing this, Deberne was delighted—this meant someone was interested. So he said, ”The more, the better, naturally—provided you have real skills. But our requirements won’t be unreasonable; as long as your professional competence is up to standard, our city will welcome you.”

”And you don’t need to worry—Kitwe is not far from your university. Traveling back and forth between Rhein City and Kitwe by rail or road only takes about a day.”

”You can pick a holiday and come to Kitwe for a visit; our municipal government can arrange for people to personally receive you.”

This proximity to Rhein City is precisely one of Kitwe’s major advantages—one that even Mombasa, with its most developed film industry, can’t match. Because Rhein City, thanks to its concentrated educational resources, attracts the country’s top-tier talent. The closer you are to Rhein City, the easier it is to absorb this talent—assuming, of course, you have the matching industries and jobs to support them.

Under Deberne’s persuasive pitch, a dozen or so Communication University students decided that very day to go to Kitwe and test the waters. However, these students weren’t the very top of their class in terms of grades, which was easy to understand. The more outstanding talents naturally preferred to stay in Rhein City, or to go to Mombasa or Dar es Salaam City to develop their careers. Their academic records were their tickets in; they had no need to risk going to a city whose success was uncertain and whose economic level was comparatively lower.