African Entrepreneurship Records

Chapter 848 Centralization of Educational Resources

 April 1892.

 The first town.

“There are now more than 5,000 town-level administrative units in our country. They generally include about five or six villages and one street, with a population ranging from a few thousand to nearly 10,000 people.” said Geers, director of the National Bureau of Statistics.

East Africa is affected by immigration. In fact, the local population is relatively concentrated. One is that it will definitely not work if the number of people opening up wasteland is small.

Secondly, the nature and society in East Africa were harsh in the early days. Both natives and wild beasts would threaten the East African immigrants, so the size of the village was not too small. Villages with only a dozen or even a few people did not exist in East Africa, at least. There are more than a few hundred people, and large villages can even have a thousand people.

 In addition, the terrain of East Africa is mainly plateau, and overall the country's terrain is relatively flat and open, so there will not be too many small mountain villages restricted by the terrain.

Moreover, in order to facilitate management, the East African government will also take the initiative to concentrate the population in one place. Population mobility in East Africa is mainly led by the government.

However, the scale of villages and towns in East Africa is not too large. Every year, mainly with policy support, the East African population disperses to inland or undeveloped areas, and then forms new villages.

 This results in a relatively high natural population growth rate in the eastern region, but the actual resident population is not too large because people are constantly moving out to live or work in new areas.

“To boost the rural economy, we should start with public resources such as educational resources. This should be done sooner rather than later. Universities can be concentrated in cities, but there is no need to do this for primary and secondary education.”

The population of East Africa is not too large compared to its land area, so there is no need to subdivide it too much. After all, there are more than 20 provinces alone. This is because many areas have not yet been divided into provinces, such as Mozambique. Angola, Southwest Africa, etc., have not met the requirements for establishing provinces for the time being, and the three places are secondary administrative mechanisms.

 In fact, the economic and other conditions of some towns in East Africa are no worse than those of cities, or even much better, such as the town of Dire Dawa on the northern border and the town of Saukwe in Mozambique in the south.

 That’s right, although Saukwe is only a former Portuguese town, its foundation is not worse than many cities in East Africa. That is to say, the current conditions in Mozambique are not enough, so Saukwe is fully capable of becoming a city.

  Balance naturally cannot take economy as the primary condition, otherwise large cities in East Africa such as Dar es Salaam and Mombasa would also be eligible. It mainly depends on comprehensive capabilities, such as economy, population, geographical location, infrastructure, etc.

In East Africa, there is no administrative concept of county, but this is only a literal meaning. In fact, many cities are counties. Of course, the city where the provincial capital is located is definitely an exception.

“In addition, the same applies to medical resources. We lack modern medical talents, so we can set up traditional Chinese medicine clinics in the countryside, and the limited medical resources are concentrated at the municipal level and above.”

 Overall, the administrative divisions of East Africa will remain unstable in the short term. As for achieving overall stability, at least until the development of various regions in East Africa is relatively balanced.

Ernst said: "Rural areas are the main population centers in East Africa. There are more than 40 million people living in rural areas in our country, accounting for about 80% of the country. Therefore, to boost the rural economy, towns should be the core and drive local economic development. "

Dire Dawa Town is quite special. It is an important military town. There are no other large-scale population settlements in the surrounding area, so it has maintained the administrative division of the town. In fact, it can be set as a prefecture-level city in the Northern Province.

However, these administrative divisions actually do not make much sense, because the current level of development in East Africa is too low, and the location advantages of many areas have not been highlighted. Maybe they have been promoted or downgraded for some reason. These are all possible real situations. .

 For example, in the west and north, many prefecture-level cities were abolished due to natural disasters and other reasons in the early days, and there were also some areas that formed new regional centers due to changes in traffic conditions and other conditions. Of course, the large cities in East Africa are relatively stable, because many areas were directly designated by Ernst based on the administrative divisions of Africa in his previous life. This is especially obvious in the former Tanzania.

Of course, to a certain extent, cities in East Africa have also inherited the influence of the original regional civilization. Although these African indigenous people have low levels of civilization, they have also experienced thousands of years of historical testing in their geographical choices.

However, there are not many places like this. The indigenous Africans use tribes as their main political system, while many East African tribes are mainly nomadic and hunting, and have no fixed residence at all.

And it probably didn’t take too long for black people to arrive in various parts of Africa. For example, in South Africa, black people from West Africa arrived there at almost the same time as European colonists. Among them, the Zulu Kingdom that was wiped out in East Africa was the vanguard.

The Arabs’ business practices in Africa also catalyzed the formation of a number of East African settlements. For example, the city of Dodoma was originally a necessary place for Arabs along the coast to go deep into the interior for business.

  In the end, it is to inherit the towns and strongholds of other colonists. East Africa has done too much. It can be said that Portugal has made the greatest contribution to East Africa.

 In fact, most of the southern territories in East Africa were obtained from the Portuguese. These areas were more or less colonized by Portugal or had Portuguese commercial activities.

Taking the Sultanate of Zanzibar as an example, the Sultanate of Zanzibar was actually a trophy obtained by the Oman Empire after defeating Portugal.

 Portugal could be said to be a dominant player in the early colonial period in Africa. However, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the decline of the Portuguese Empire caused the Portuguese to be driven from the interior to the coast by the indigenous people. This is the main reason why East Africa can become big in Africa.

In other words, Portugal’s overall strategy in Africa was shrinking in the early days, and East Africa occupied this window period.

Portugal withdrew, but other forces did not fully know the Portuguese's true and false intentions, so a colonial vacuum zone was formed in southern Africa. East Africa took advantage of the void and entered. By the time Portugal and other powers reacted, East Africa had already grown in size.

“The current rural population distribution in East Africa is mainly concentrated in the central and eastern parts. The central part is slightly worse, but it can barely meet the standard. In addition, the urban strength in the central part is relatively strong, so further improvement of the rural areas in the central part can be carried out in an orderly manner.”

"Take education as an example. There should be at least two middle schools in every town. Those with financial strength can build two campuses, and those without financial strength can share one campus. As for primary schools, population density is the main reference, and they should be located in areas with convenient transportation. After all, primary school students are obviously not as independent in their lives as middle school students, and they have to go home nearby, so it is best to choose a central location.”

“Education resources at the bottom level should be concentrated at the town level. Of course, schools can also be built in large villages or farms or plantations with better conditions and a larger population.”

 Educational resources should not be too dispersed, nor should they be too concentrated. Especially for basic education, too much investment will be required in basic education, and it will also be difficult to allocate teachers. However, too much concentration is not conducive to the learning of students in remote areas.

Of course, this also means a major change in the compulsory education model in East Africa, which will no longer be decentralized to villages. In fact, this is closely related to the current social development of East Africa, as well as future economic, transportation and other factors.

Now with the popularization of animal power in East Africa, the repair of roads, and the improvement of the public security environment, travel costs have been greatly reduced. In the future, with the development of new transportation such as cars, travel costs will be even greater. This is a further concentration of grassroots education resources in East Africa. prerequisites.

It is also conducive to improving the quality of education. After all, many village primary schools only have single-digit teachers with varying levels of skills. Centralizing them can improve efficiency, speed up communication between teachers, and promote the improvement of teaching standards.

 (End of this chapter)