Chapter 1092: Chapter 101: Status of Water Conservancy Construction
Of course, by easing relations with Brazil in this way, East Africa can only treat the symptoms, not the root cause. After all, East Africa itself is already a major coffee producer globally, and East African coffee is quite renowned worldwide. Especially coffee from the Kenya region, which, after years of marketing, has gained widespread recognition and become a best-seller in Europe.
Therefore, even if East Africa makes concessions to Brazil, they are very limited. In contrast, East Africa gains more benefits from Brazil, making Brazil essentially an important overseas raw material supplier for East Africa.
This highlights the gap between industrial and agricultural countries. Although East Africa can only be considered a semi-industrial nation, Brazil’s industrial level is even lower in comparison.
Moreover, Brazil’s geographic location is disadvantageous; South America is too far from other markets, with the nearest being the United States and East Africa, both of which currently have higher industrial levels than Brazil.
Take the coffee trade, for instance. Coffee grown in Brazil can only be sold to other countries because its domestic processing capabilities are not high, and it lacks independent sales channels.
The same goes for Argentina. However, Argentina has the advantage of vast plains suitable for development, and its population is relatively smaller compared to Brazil, along with other reasons, leading to completely different economic developments for the two countries at this stage.
Leikamon: "In summary, the purpose of this ’friendly’ exchange is to demonstrate East Africa’s strong military power, so that Brazil and other South American countries have fewer distractions when trading with us."
To put it bluntly, East Africa wants to use "gunboat diplomacy" to intimidate South American countries to ensure its interests in South America. However, the primary focus is still deterrence.
While Chel and Leikamon were talking, Brazil also had mixed feelings about the arrival of the East Africans, especially the two world’s most advanced dreadnoughts, which further elevated the Brazilian government’s evaluation of East Africa.
Brazilian President Nilo Pessania said: "In front of East Africa’s battleships, we can clearly recognize the gap between the two countries. We have underestimated East Africa’s strength."
Although the South African war made East Africa stand out on the global stage, the impression at that time was more of a strong military power, especially in terms of land forces.
Later, when the dreadnoughts appeared, and East Africa became the second country in the world to possess dreadnoughts, entirely manufactured by East Africa itself, it made people realize that East Africa also had notable industrial capabilities.
In Rio de Janeiro, under the witness of the East African fleet, Ambassador Leikamon and Brazilian President Nilo Pessania engaged in friendly exchanges.
Apart from military deterrence, East Africa was not unkind, as it also brought many cooperation proposals.
These included building undersea cables between East Africa and South America, enhancing information exchanges between Brazil and East Africa, establishing more efficient diplomatic mechanisms, strengthening economic field cooperation between the two countries, and jointly addressing the development of emerging tropical plantation areas in Southeast Asia, etc.
Although Brazil and East Africa are competitors in agriculture, they still have common topics when facing competitors from Southeast Asia, India, and Caribbean coastal countries.
"President Pessania, thank you for your acknowledgment. I believe the relationship between East Africa and Brazil will become increasingly close." After signing a large number of cooperation agreements, Ambassador Leikamon said satisfactorily.
President Pessania’s face was amiable, though what he thought internally was unknown. However, in front of the East African fleet, he had few negative thoughts.
This brings us to mention Pessania himself, who is a Republican from Rio de Janeiro, so when the East African fleet docked at Rio de Janeiro’s port, naturally he held more "respect" for East Africa.
Subsequently, under the escort of the East African Navy, Ambassador Leikamon departed from Brazil, heading towards the next stop in Uruguay.
This time, the East African Navy will visit four countries separately: Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina.
As for Chile, although East Africa has thoughts, the East African Navy also fears the wind and waves of the Drake Passage. If they were to capsize there, it would be a huge loss for the East African Navy.
...
Rhein City.
East Africa is active in both the Far East and South America regions mainly to open up markets. Regardless of the means used, as long as the effect can be achieved, it doesn’t matter to East Africa.
While East Africa is frequently engaging in diplomatic activities, internally it continues to evaluate the current development situation within East Africa.
There’s no need to specifically discuss the specifics of the two Five-Year Plans, as some of East Africa’s policies began well before the Five-Year Plans, such as construction in the field of water resources in East Africa.
Minister of Water Resources Yards reported: "As of now, our country has constructed 247 large reservoirs, 1,937 medium-sized reservoirs, and over 63,000 small reservoirs, with a total storage capacity nearing 400 billion cubic meters."
In comparison, the Three Gorges Dam of the Far East Empire in a previous life had a storage capacity of 39.3 billion cubic meters, or nearly 40 billion cubic meters. It means that from the colonial period to half a century later, East Africa has constructed the equivalent of ten Three Gorges Dams.
In reality, East Africa indeed has a need for building a large number of reservoirs, but one cannot overlook the role of the many natural lakes East Africa possesses. For instance, Lake Malawi, the smallest of East Africa’s three major freshwater lakes, has a water storage capacity of about 8 trillion cubic meters.
What is the concept of 8 trillion cubic meters? It equates to some seas. For example, Bohai’s water volume is approximately 2 trillion cubic meters, making Lake Malawi about four times that of Bohai.
Of course, apart from these gigantic lakes that belong to the world’s class, there are many large lakes naturally formed in East Africa, especially on the East African Plateau and central East Africa. They can all serve the function of reservoirs.
Thus, even though the results of East Africa’s efforts over the past half-century are very impressive, for Mother Nature, the work done by the East Africans doesn’t even count as a fraction.
Yards continued: "Over the past thirty years, the total length of artificial canals built in our nation exceeds three million kilometers, with one million sets of mechanized wells constructed, and the total length of various dikes constructed exceeds 200,000 kilometers. At the same time, we have also completed governance of most domestic river basins, overall signifying that our achievements in water resource construction in the past are outstanding. They have made significant contributions to the supply of water resources for our country’s industry, agriculture, and cities, while greatly enhancing our inland water transportation conditions."
"Especially between the 1990s and the Twenty-Five Plan, we completed the full-line project of the East African Grand Canal, significantly improving our nation’s sea-river transportation capacity."
Indeed, the East African Grand Canal is primarily completed by connecting the Zambezi River and Congo River systems. Therefore, even if intending to navigate through, it requires a complex set of transfer procedures. And due to geographical constraints, there are many compromises; currently allowing only vessels under 300 tons to fully navigate.
"The canal construction greatly enhances our inland water transportation capacity, reducing our logistics costs. It is an important complement to the existing transportation network. As our economic construction accelerates, and because of territorial reasons, the demands on transportation logistics are also increasing."
East Africa’s territory is vast, yet its population is relatively sparse, thereby undoubtedly increasing logistics costs for East Africa. Therefore, the East African government, or Ernst himself, has always placed great emphasis on domestic transportation construction.
Although East Africa’s railway and road network have significantly improved East Africa’s transport situation, water transport has always been something Ernst has been persistently concerned about.
Developing water transport is also a major challenge for East Africa. For this, at least over two million Black workers sacrificed their lives to enable the construction of the East African Grand Canal.
