African Entrepreneurship Record-Chapter 878 - 182: Highland Province

Although Morogoro is developing well, it is just a small episode in this trip. After all, as a city not far from First Town, Ernst has plenty of time to visit Morogoro. In fact, Ernst had already inspected Morogoro twice before, but the last inspection was in 1888, when Morogoro had obviously not developed to today's level.

The train did not stop in Morogoro but continued towards the next stop, Dodoma, passing through the Udzungwa Mountain area. The railway began to detour towards the northeast, then transitioned to the East African Plateau. Because the slope in the northwest is gentle, the Central Railway originally constructed the northern line plan.

The southern line plan was to directly connect Morogoro to Iringa and then directly to Mbeya, but this bypassed Dodoma. Hence, the East African Ministry of Railways at the time chose the northern line plan to accommodate Dodoma and the Highland Province.

However, this decision later proved correct. With the opening of the Bujumbura-Dodoma railway, the Great Lakes Region's economic ties with the east became closer.

As for the southern line plan, it was not without merit. It could greatly shorten the distance between Dar es Salaam and Mbeya, so when the East African Railway is expanded in the future, the line from Morogoro to Iringa will surely be constructed.

...

Dodoma.

Ernst got off the train here, and the train would stay for a short time. Nowadays, Dodoma, as the capital of Highland Province, has developed similarly to First Town. As the fourth largest economy on the East African Plateau, Dodoma obviously cannot compare with Nairobi, Mwanza, or Kisumu. However, as one of the national railway hubs, Dodoma's economic size ranks among the top ten in East Africa.

Especially after being incorporated into the former Hohenzollern Provincial District (mainly the eastern shore area of Lake Tanganyika), Dodoma's development has been more rapid, with provincial resources concentrating here, and industrial development particularly swift.

This inevitably mentions the area of the Highland Province. On the East African Plateau, the Highland Province's area ranks first. In fact, the area of South Salzburg Province is larger than that of the Highland Province, but South Salzburg Province spans both the East African Plateau and the Katanga Plateau, not entirely belonging to the provinces on the East African Plateau.

The advantage in size, combined with geographical advantages, has allowed Dodoma to develop relatively quickly. However, in Ernst's mind, plans to re-divide the Highland Province have long been considered.

If the Serengeti Grassland is included, the Highland Province covers an astonishing four hundred thousand square kilometers, which is sizable enough to be a relatively large country even in Europe.

The Highland Province stood out for its area early on because the overall development level in the Highland Province region was relatively poor at the time. However, after years of development, the population density in the Highland Province today ranks in the upper echelons of East Africa. Additionally, Dodoma's location being too far east within the Highland Province is not conducive to driving economic development across the province.

According to Ernst's expectations, the Highland Province should at least be re-divided into two or three provinces in the future. This is not a place like the Northern Province or Southwest Africa, where desert terrain predominates. The agricultural conditions are quite favorable, especially after large-scale water conservancy projects in East Africa, making the Highland Province the largest wheat-producing area in East Africa.

Moreover, after the abolition of the old Hohenzollern Provincial District, the Soron Lake (Lake Tanganyika) basin now lacks a decent large city, especially compared to the Great Lake (Lake Victoria) and Lake Malawi.

Of course, the capital of West Great Lake Province, Bujumbura, actually also belongs to the Soron Lake basin, but the economy of West Great Lake Province mainly lies in the Great Lake basin.

Dodoma is not the largest city within the province either; the largest city in Highland Province is Mwanza, located on the southern shore of the Great Lake.

However, given the area of the Highland Province, significant changes to the administrative divisions on the East African Plateau in the future are inevitable, along with necessary adjustments to internal cities within the region.

Currently, Ernst has not undertaken these changes mainly because East Africa's primary focus is on the development of the southern and western regions, which have yet to have their provincial boundaries defined. Therefore, once the economy and population in these two areas reach a certain scale, East Africa will delineate administrative divisions, including with regions like the Highland Province.

Even if the Highland Province is split, the provinces that emerge from the division will not perform poorly. Each of these provinces will still cover an area of at least fifteen thousand square kilometers.

It should be noted that in previous lives, Tanzania had over eleven primary administrative regions in this area. Tanzania's primary administrative regions are called "zones," akin to provinces in other countries, though smaller in size, sometimes even smaller than a U.S. state, considering the U.S., despite its vast area, only has fifty states, while Tanzania with less than a million square kilometers has thirty-one primary administrative zones.

However, Tanzania's overall terrain is flat, and the climate differences are not too significant, so the "zones" are evenly spread. Except when compared with cities like Dar es Salaam or Dodoma, the strength is relatively balanced.

The provinces in East Africa are destined to not have small areas. Even excluding uninhabitable regions such as the Congo rainforest, Southwest Africa, the Somali region, and northern deserts (mainly the area around the North and South Sudan border), the land area of East Africa is still close to ten million square kilometers.

Ernst's expectation for the number of East African provinces should be around thirty to forty. Currently, East Africa already has more than twenty provincial-level administrative regions, with more divisions planned for the future.

However, it will not reach a figure close to one hundred as in Tsarist Russia, where the primary administrative divisions are provinces and states, besides which there are higher-level governorates, about ten in number, similar to the military regions established in East Africa.

The national conditions of East Africa and Tsarist Russia are nonetheless different. Not considering Alaska, a royal family territory, Tsarist Russia's landmass exceeds that of East Africa by nearly the size of one United States.

The United States has nearly fifty states, which in Ernst's view is not quite reasonable. Particularly, in the American Midwest, those horizontally and vertically straight boundary lines make it easy for U.S. states to draw economic strength discrepancies and are not conducive to central control over local divisions.

Of course, given the different national circumstances, East Africa is a centralized state with a much stronger central power compared to local authorities, while the United States is a federal system with states pooling resources for governance, so the two cannot be directly compared.

According to Ernst's thinking, naturally, the provincial system is superior, being the system he is most familiar with. It is also beneficial for the governance of the Heixinggen Royal Family.

Moreover, for governance needs, Ernst is considering establishing principalities, primarily for regions outside the main territory, such as Alaska and other remote places, to conveniently allow the Heixinggen Royal Family to spread risk in the future.

Furthermore, overseas areas, far from East Africa, with strong centrifugal tendencies, will likely demand greater autonomy rights. If set as a principality or affiliated state, it will help maintain ties, similar to the Commonwealth. Additionally, having the Heixinggen Royal Family serve as future leaders of overseas colonies could more easily ensure domestic royal family security.

However, thinking about this now is somewhat distant. Even with the southern and western parts developed, it is unknown how long it will take, so Ernst has no plans to make significant changes to East Africa's administrative divisions in the coming years.

In Dodoma, Ernst primarily got off the train for some fresh air. After staying at the station for several dozen minutes, the train departed again. In the following days, Ernst would successively inspect Iringa and Mbeya, two regions he hadn't visited before.

After passing through Mbeya, Ernst would focus on evaluating potential sites for the "future capital" in the central area.