Chapter 433: Small-scale governance project
It turns out that the work is never finished. After a few days of simple rest, the "laborers" of Canal No. 1 were transferred from East Africa to the Little Rhine River to renovate the river channel.
The improvement of the Little Rhine River course started two months ago.
"Your Majesty, there have been fifteen floods along the Little Rhine this year, inundating more than 13,000 acres of fertile land. Because our villages are generally built far away from the river bank, we have not suffered much damage, but there is still river water. The light rainy season flooded into three villages, and this is only the statistics from the end of last year to March this year."
Constantine asked: "As far as I know, the farmland in East Africa is a good place carefully selected by experienced farmers. The Central Province has not expanded the planting area in the past two years, and the rain is not much different from normal years." , why are we still suffering from flood disasters?”
“Your Majesty, we have consulted water conservancy experts on this matter, and the reason they gave is that the condition of the Little Rhine is bound to cause such a problem.”
"What's happening?"
"Generally speaking, it is because rivers all over the world have a problem, that is, the river water is affected by the Coriolis force (geostrophic deflection force), and then it will deflect. Our Little Rhine River in East Africa is affected by it. The effect of this force will deflect to the left bank, and over time it will become tortuous. And the river water passing through the tortuous river channel is naturally not as easy to flow out as the straight river channel, so sometimes when the rain is heavy, the river water tends to flow turbulently."
The Minister of Agriculture tried his best to use his own knowledge level to explain the Little Rhine problem, which fully demonstrated the worrying ability of the East African Minister of Agriculture with a primary school education in national governance.
“Uh, okay! What you mean by this is that our river is more tortuous, so the water flow is not smooth and it is easy to change its course!” Constantine concluded.
“Almost, almost.”
This way things will become clear.
The rivers in East Africa are very different from the rivers in other regions of the world. It is better to say that the larger rivers, such as the Nile River, Zambezi River, Congo River, Limpopo River... East Africa has a little bit of it.
These rivers are ranked among the best in the world, but the economy of East Africa is not closely tied to these rivers. On the one hand, the outlet to the sea is not in East Africa’s hands, and on the other hand, even with the outlet of these rivers, it will have a negative impact on the current situation of East Africa. In fact, it is of little use.
The Nile River is better. It has a huge and fertile estuary delta and an excellent port like Alexandria. However, the area it flows through is mainly desert. It is the well-deserved mother river of Egypt.
However, there are many waterfalls in Egypt and Sudan, which makes the shipping value of the Nile River almost negligible to East Africa. If it were possible to reach the Mediterranean directly from South Sudan, Ernst would not mind starting a war, and the same would be true for Egypt. In the same way, if the Nile River were not blocked by these waterfalls, its territory would not have only extended to northern Sudan for thousands of years.
Not to mention the Congo River. Although the navigable area is large, it is limited to the tropical rainforest area of the Congo Basin. This is a green desert, and its value is second only to the desert. The most terrible thing is that the outlet of the Congo River is a waterfall. Not as valuable as the Nile.
The same is true for the Zambezi River. Only the river section in Mozambique can reach directly to the sea. The Zambezi River is most famous for its canyons, dangerous shoals and waterfalls.
East Africa also has a boundary river with Cape Town - the Orange River. The area that the Orange River passes through has basically no inhabited deserts and mountains, and the water volume is not enough.
In short, no one can take advantage of it. After excluding these world-famous large rivers in the past, the most valuable shipping value in East Africa is the small and medium-sized rivers along the East African coast. The Little Rhine River is one of the most typical ones, and small rivers will encounter a very serious problem, that is, the river channel is not wide enough and is very tortuous.
Even the Little Rhine cannot be described as a nine-bend ileum. It encounters a large bay almost 100 meters away. This is almost the characteristic of the entire Little Rhine. It is more appropriate to describe it as a mountain road with eighteen bends.
(Picture: The straight-line distance of the river section in the picture is about ten kilometers)
In fact, this state of the Little Rhine is the normal state of all natural rivers in the world, but the rivers in East Africa are quite outrageous. No agricultural civilization has been born for thousands of years, which means that there are almost no water conservancy projects in sub-Saharan Africa. , repairing river channels will naturally not exist.
Most rivers of the same level in Europe and the Far East have been artificially repaired, and at least the main river sections are very straight.
If it is a non-artificially repaired river, of course it can also be relatively straight, because the river itself can also be cut and straightened. However, such rivers generally have large flows, which can be reduced by one force, making the river surface wide and the river channel relatively straight. .
For example, the Yellow River with less water in the Far East has an average width of more than 500 meters, the Yangtze River has an average width of more than 900 meters, the Rhine River in Europe has an average width of more than 300 meters, and the Danube River is also known as the Amazon River in Europe. The average width in the middle section Over one thousand six hundred meters.
As for the Little Rhine, except for the river channel at the mouth of the sea, which is more than 100 meters long, most of the river sections are only about 20 meters long, with an average width of no more than 40 meters. Even if the river surface is narrow, the Little Rhine is still too bayous.
This greatly limits the development potential of the Little Rhine, and at the same time poses a certain threat to agriculture and residence along the coast. It is fine in normal years, but if there is an extreme year, the precipitation surges, and the entire East Africa will not be able to survive.
So regarding the situation of the Little Rhine, after discussing with Ernst, Constantine and his son decided to take a heavy blow to the Little Rhine.
This is the Little Rhine River Improvement and Strengthening Project, referred to as the "Little Rhine River Improvement and Strengthening Project", which includes a full set of one-stop services for more than 150 kilometers along the Little Rhine River.
Including dredging and widening the river channel, strengthening the river embankment, artificially cutting and straightening all the bends in the plain area where the Little Rhine flows through, and comprehensively upgrading the agricultural irrigation system along the route.
After the completion of the project, the level of the Little Rhine River will be raised to more than 50 meters, which will greatly improve the Little Rhine's flood discharge and navigation capabilities in the rainy season, ensuring the safety of farmland, villages and cities along the route, and most importantly, the safety of the first town in the capital.
The Little Rhine has an obvious flood season, so the project is mainly carried out in the dry season when the river flow is at its lowest. The difficulty of the project is relatively average, that is, the amount of work is relatively large.
In addition to the Little Rhine, rivers along the East African coast such as the Rufuma River, Rufiji River, and Tana River (rivers in Kenya) have these problems to a greater or lesser extent.
On the contrary, the conditions of the Juba River and the Shabelle River are slightly higher, because these two rivers mainly flow through desert areas, and the shape of the river channels is relatively ideal, but the economic value of the areas where these two rivers flow is relatively low.
According to Ernst’s idea, of course, it is to carry out major repairs and special repairs. Taking advantage of the fact that East Africa still has enough cheap “laborers” to complete these projects at once, it will benefit East Africa for generations to come.
(End of this chapter)