Chapter 892 Industrial Incubation Center
As the first railway hub in East Africa, the importance of New Frankfurt is self-evident. Of course, a country as vast as East Africa cannot have only one railway hub.
According to the "three vertical and three horizontal" plan of East Africa, these six trunk railways should form nine intersections when connected vertically and horizontally. However, because the West Coast Railway cannot cross the Namib Desert for the time being, Walvis Bay cannot form a railway hub.
The objective reason for this result is that the Namib Desert is a mobile desert. Even in the 20th century, only a few countries have the ability to build roads and railway facilities in such areas.
Moreover, it is difficult to maintain in the later stage, and the railway is easily buried by wind and sand. Either supporting sand control projects are carried out along the line, or elevated railway lines are built like the Far East Empire in the 21st century to reduce wind and sand erosion and flooding.
These two points are obviously not easy to achieve in East Africa now, and even if they can be achieved, it is extremely uneconomical.
Therefore, in reality, there are only eight intersections of the three vertical and three horizontal lines, and these eight points are the railway hubs on the six most important trunk lines in East Africa.
In the central region, there are three national railway hubs, namely Kisangani, New Frankfurt, and Bulawayo.
In fact, including branch railways, Harare, Lubumbashi, Dodoma, etc. are also regional railway hubs, but East Africa is currently mainly focusing on trunk railway construction. Branch railways will only be built before trunk railways unless they are of great value like the Harare-Bei Railway.
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Mbeya is the science and technology center of East Africa, which is unexpected. After all, higher education in East Africa is concentrated in the eastern coastal areas, and Soga is a city that was built with the direction of science, education and culture.
So it is neither a science and technology center nor a city with the most concentrated higher education. It is natural that Mbeya can stand out from many cities in East Africa.
Today, the industrial scale of Mbeya has been surpassed by Harare, but its industrial foundation is still strong, and the higher education level of Mbeya can also be ranked in the top five in East Africa.
Since it has industrial and educational background, the scientific and technological level of Mbeya will naturally not be bad in East Africa. The core reason why Mbeya surpasses Dar es Salaam, First Town, Soga... is that the scientific research institutions in Mbeya far exceed those in other regions.
Including colleges and universities and independent research institutions, Mbeya has a total of more than 100 research institutes of various types, including 13 national-level, 32 provincial-level, and 93 municipal-level, covering most industrial fields such as metallurgy, electricity, power, energy, steel, railways, and ships.
"The scientific research level of our Mbeya city is also very advanced in the whole East Africa. This is the result after some institutions moved to Lusaka, Harare and other central provinces. If it were not for the loss of industry and talents, Mbeya would only be stronger in the field of scientific research."
The mayor of Mbeya said with a little regret. After all, as the vanguard of the development of the central region of East Africa, the geographical location of Mbeya determined its main position in supporting the development of the central region.
Because according to the geographical division of East Africa, Mbeya City is just at the intersection of the central and eastern regions, and the inland cities were basically mainly developing heavy industries in the early days. At that time, Mbeya City, as the heavy industrial center of East Africa, naturally had to take responsibility and assist the various industrial and mining cities in the central region to build the framework.
"Mayor Reni, don't be sorry. Industrial transfer is the general trend. The country has formulated a general policy, and we can only follow it. Moreover, Mbeya can achieve today's achievements. It is inseparable from the policy inclination of the central government at the time. Only when everyone makes progress can our country develop better in the future." Logans, who came to collect money, persuaded on the side.
Logans is the mayor of New Frankfurt. His mission in Mbeya this time is to collect some scientific research institutions and talents in the fields of automobile, electricity and equipment manufacturing in Mbeya and bring them back to New Frankfurt according to the requirements of the central government.
In the past ten years, Mbeya can be said to be the "incubator" of industries in various provinces in central China. After all, as the earliest heavy industrial base in East Africa, Mbeya has a rich family background.
Regarding the government "scum" like Logans who doesn't care about his face, Reni said unhappily: "You are just taking advantage of others. I am so angry when I think of your New Frankfurt City. Rhine City doesn't even exist yet, but you have already reaped the first batch of policy dividends."
Logans smiled and said: "You can't say that. Even if there is no Rhine City, the status of our New Frankfurt City will not be low. After all, it is a transportation hub. The name Frankfurt alone is full of the central government's high hopes for our city."
Reni said disdainfully: "You have certain advantages in transportation, but it is not much higher than our city. After all, land transportation between the central and eastern parts cannot bypass our Mbeya. In the future, Mbeya will build more roads and railways, and we also have Lake Malawi, a natural large lake, and water transportation is relatively developed."
This is indeed true. Lake Solon (Lake Tanganyika) and Lake Malawi have created a unique location advantage for Mbeya City, which plays an important role in land and water transportation in East Africa.
Even compared with New Frankfurt, the difference between the two is very small. Lake Solon and Lake Malawi are both long and narrow lakes. The north-south distance of Lake Malawi is more than 560 kilometers, and Lake Tanganyika is more than 670 kilometers long. Therefore, if you want to bypass Mbeya City from land, you have to go a long way. In addition, the depth of the two lakes is more than hundreds of meters, so you can only rely on ships to travel through the lake.
"This time, we will allocate 30% of the Second Automobile Factory Research Institute to join New Frankfurt City. As for the equipment manufacturing industry, we have not yet selected the personnel. After all, the equipment manufacturing industry is very complicated. Our plan is to draw some forces from 13 strong factories and research institutes to join your city, including electricity, locomotives, engines and other fields." Reni said with a painful feeling.
New Frankfurt City will at least draw a professional team of hundreds of people from Mbeya City this time, which is also a serious injury to Mbeya City. The last time it did this was Harare City.
However, Harare is much more "excessive" than New Frankfurt. It has almost copied 60% of Mbeya's industrial departments and scientific research institutions to Matabele Province. Otherwise, Harare would not have developed so fast.
Of course, Mbeya cannot do this by itself, but the entire Lake Malawi Industrial Zone behind Mbeya has drawn a large number of elite troops to the three central provinces to support the industrial framework of these three provinces.
So this time New Frankfurt "sucked blood" from Mbeya, which was not a serious injury to Mbeya.
"These are all our treasures in Mbeya, Logans, you have to treat them well." Rainey said.
Logans naturally agreed to this: "Don't worry, Mayor Rennie, talents are respected everywhere, and our New Frankfurt will naturally receive these distinguished guests with the best treatment."
After spending three days in Mbeya, one of the industrial incubation centers in East Africa, Logans continued his journey eastward. After all, Mbeya is just the starting point, and there are cities such as Dar es Salaam, Mombasa, and Nairobi waiting for him.
According to the itinerary, Logans will go to Soga City after returning, mainly to snatch talents from East African universities. College students are scarce resources in East Africa, and various cities will go to Soga City to recruit talents.
Soga City is mainly composed of domestic college students, while the group of international students is mainly allocated by East African industrial departments. They are generally selected by state-affiliated agencies, state-owned enterprises or royal enterprises first, and then they can pick up some "leftovers" in the local area. However, it is hard to say the upper limit of those who can study abroad, but the lower limit is very high, and various cities and institutions in East Africa will also rush to get them.