African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1365 Copper Belt Economic Development Zone Planning
Lubumbashi took the lead in integrating the copper mines and related industrial resources in the copper belt, but this was obviously not the purpose of Kitwe Mayor Deborn. After all, this was obviously paving the way for Lubumbashi.

So Debern also put forward his own conditions. He said to Mayor Pok of Lubumbashi: "In the development of this copper belt, Kitwe's related demands should be guaranteed. Although Lubumbashi accounts for the majority, some important resources should be decentralized."

Poker agreed immediately: "Of course. As long as Kitwe City cooperates with us, everyone will definitely get a share of the spoils. After all, our goal is to unite the copper belt and fight against external competition."

The advantage of Lubumbashi over Kitwe is that Lubumbashi itself is strong, which means that Lubumbashi has more financial resources. In addition, it controls more market channels than Kitwe.

After all, Lubumbashi’s status as a transportation hub is higher than Kitwe’s, and this alone gives Lubumbashi an advantage in the national market.

DeBern wants to take advantage of Lubumbashi's financial, transportation and market advantages to expand the copper belt's pie so that everyone can get a bigger share and eliminate internal contradictions and disputes.

In fact, it is still very difficult for the Copper Belt to make the pie bigger. After all, the Copper Belt not only faces competition from other copper producing areas in the country, but also has to resist competition from overseas copper producing areas. It is already very difficult to maintain the current market share without decline.

However, Debern did not explain these words in detail to Poke, as Poke was still obsessed with the dream of unifying the entire copper belt.

This is understandable. After all, the copper belt is currently the most economically and industrially developed region in East Africa. If Lubumbashi can maintain its position as a regional center, it will be able to further accumulate capital for Lubumbashi's future development.

In the following days, the Lubumbashi and Kitwe municipal governments engaged in intense bargaining over how to cooperate, coordinate and allocate industries.

……

Inside the guest house in Lubumbashi.

Debern's secretary Baya asked in confusion: "Mayor, we are giving the center of the entire copper belt to Lubumbashi, which is too cheap for them. Is this too much of a loss for us?"

In Baya's opinion, Kitwe can also become the center of the copper belt. After all, although Lubumbashi has strong comprehensive strength, there is almost no gap between Kitwe and Lubumbashi in copper mining and related industries.

After taking a sip of tea, Debern said with a smile, "Of course. On the surface, Kitwe is not inferior to Lubumbashi in industry, especially copper-related industries. The entire copper belt is centered on copper-related industries. Both Lubumbashi and Kitwe have the ability to integrate the copper industry in the region."

"But the unfair part is that Lubumbashi's overall strength is too strong. We simply can't compete with Lubumbashi."

"If it were in the past, I would definitely not give up the competition with Lubumbashi so easily, but now the situation has changed. The external wolves have come, so the copper belt must work together to deal with external competition."

"Fighting alone is a dead end, so there must be a city to lead the entire copper belt to fight its way out, and the resources consumed in the early stage are also huge, so this road is not easy to take."

Baya lowered his voice and said, "You mean to let Lubumbashi take the lead and we..."

Debern laughed and said, "Don't judge others by your own standards. I am sincere in letting Lubumbashi integrate the copper mining industry in the region, because from the beginning, my purpose was not to come here for the copper mining industry."

Debern stood up and walked to the window sill. He looked at the prosperous city of Lubumbashi and said slowly, "The relationship between Kitwe and Lubumbashi is like that between two companies. Both Kitwe and Lubumbashi have the technology of the copper mining industry."

"However, Lubumbashi has more funds, more connections, and more channels, which means we cannot compete with Lubumbashi in this field."

“So it’s better to sell Lubumbashi and let them become the leader of the copper belt. At the same time, because of our sincerity, Lubumbashi will certainly have to pay a certain price, which is to take us along for a ride when they get rich.”

"We packaged and sold some uncompetitive copper mining industries to Lubumbashi, or used them as capital to invest in this large company in Lubumbashi."

"This is beneficial to both Lubumbashi and Kitwe. Lubumbashi has more sources of goods, and with their market channels, the interests of the entire copper belt can be maximized, and we will get more dividends."

"We can also be said to have become the second largest shareholder of the Copper Belt. However, if we work alone, we do not have as much capital as Lubumbashi, nor do we have as many connections and channels as Lubumbashi. The final result will still be that Lubumbashi will swallow up our company. Therefore, if we cannot defeat them, joining is the right choice."

"If Lubumbashi wants to become the leader of the copper belt, it must make some contributions to convince other towns in the copper belt. This also means that Lubumbashi must share its financial reserves, political, scientific and educational resources, and market channels that it has enjoyed exclusively in the past."

"If we let Kitwe do these things, we can indeed do it, but obviously our ability to resist risks is far inferior to Lubumbashi. Then Kitwe really has no future. If it can't withstand the pressure once, it may face the risk of bankruptcy of the entire company."

Simply put, Lubumbashi is a wealthy and powerful city, while Kitwe City has weak financial strength and low political carrying capacity. After all, Lubumbashi is the capital of Swabia Province. If there is a problem with the economy, Swabia Province will be the victim.

If Kitwe were to fail, no one would come to save it. As for the decline of Kitwe, there are too many cities in East Africa, including many cities with potential, so no one cares about the fate of Kitwe.

DeBern went on to say: “Next, our city’s funds and energy should be transferred from the copper mining industry to the development of other areas.”

"After reaching an agreement with Lubumbashi and other copper belt towns, the market and industry shares are stable. We don't need to worry too much. We just need to keep an eye on Lubumbashi and make sure it doesn't mess up."

“We can take this opportunity to make up for our shortcomings in other areas. Kitwe’s industrial structure is very unhealthy and we must get rid of our dependence on copper.”

According to DeBern, if Kitwe continues to compete with Lubumbashi, it will inevitably have to devote more energy to it, so there is no need to compete with Lubumbashi in the copper mining industry.

To put it bluntly, the city of Kitwe has "surrendered" and "submitted" to Lubumbashi, which is also the view of most people.

However, DeBern is well aware that this is not surrender but a question of trade-offs. Now DeBern does not want to compete with Lubumbashi in this traditional industry that has already shown signs of decline.

Three days later...

The governments of Lubumbashi and Kitwe formally reached a preliminary consensus, and the two cities simultaneously extended invitations to other towns in the Copper Belt to further implement the collaborative development model of the Copper Belt.

Faced with the threats and inducements from the boss and the second in command of the copper mining belt, other towns naturally had no choice but to submit. If they were kicked out of the circle, their fate would certainly be miserable.

After consensus and agreement were reached in the entire region, the Copper Belt Economic Cooperation and Development Zone Plan, led by Lubumbashi, was officially submitted to the East African Central Government.

Rhine City.

Ernst took the copper belt's call for collective development seriously. "The copper belt is an important industrial base in central China. We have always planned to integrate local resources to avoid involutionary competition. It is great that Lubumbashi and Kitwe have taken the initiative to propose this, which shows that they are ahead of other regions in East Africa in terms of thinking."

Finance Minister Logans said: "Your Majesty, in the planning of the Copper Belt Economic Cooperation Development Zone, it is said that Kitwe Mayor Debern played a significant role in promoting it."

“People who are familiar with the history of Lubumbashi and Kitwe know that in the past, the two cities had a very fierce competition for regional dominance.”

"But now it seems that Mayor Debern is a very courageous person who dares to change this tradition and promote the collaborative development of the two cities."

Regarding this, Ernst said: "This shows that he is a smart man. The gap between Kitwe and Lubumbashi is too big. If they choose to compete, Kitwe will most likely not be able to outcompete Lubumbashi. Of course, this is not the most important thing, because of our policy, the increase in imported copper ore is the biggest threat to Kitwe."

Logans asked, "Your Majesty, do you think we should support the passage of this plan?"

Ernst said: "Of course, since it is cooperation in the economic field and is consistent with the general direction of the Fifth Five-Year Plan, it is natural to encourage the collaborative development of regional industries."

"However, we should also take this opportunity to promote the implementation of some policies in the local area, such as the environment, production efficiency, industrial structure adjustment, etc."

The environmental problems in the Copper Belt are relatively serious. After all, mining itself causes considerable damage to the environment, and coupled with metal smelting, this is a major challenge for the Copper Belt region.

The reason for saying this is mainly because the copper mining belt is too close to Rhine City. If the ecological environment of the copper mining belt deteriorates rapidly, it will inevitably affect the surrounding areas, including Rhine City. You must know that the upstream sources of some rivers in Rhine City are not far from the copper mining belt.

In terms of efficiency, the focus is on upgrading production machinery, improving production efficiency, reducing resource waste and lowering production costs.

This is also the reason why Debern expected that integrating the copper mining belt would cost a lot of money. With the implementation of the Fifth Five-Year Plan, eliminating backward production capacity was originally the focus of this round of the Fifth Five-Year Plan.

For example, further eliminating a number of backward production equipment and power equipment, such as some manufacturing enterprises that still use backward steam machinery.

Specifically for important mining areas such as the copper belt, it also involves the updating and iteration of mining equipment. After all, with the development of time, mining areas are paying more and more attention to factors such as efficiency and safety.

In addition, some illegal black mines and workshops must be eliminated. This is the product of free economic development. In the past decade, in order to stimulate economic development, East Africa chose to turn a blind eye to these illegal mines and workshops.

Now, East Africa has passed the era of blindly pursuing output. For the sake of high-quality economic development, it is necessary to crack down on these backward production units that are even on the edge of the law.

This is not an exaggeration. In many small private mines, the safety of workers is not guaranteed, production standards are not met in order to save costs, and there are no protective measures at all.

In addition, the existence of these illegal mines and workshops is obviously more destructive to the environment, for example, there is no restraint in water use and it is discharged indiscriminately.

Although formal production companies cannot avoid these problems, they will always take some simple measures under the supervision of the East African government, even if they are just face-saving projects. However, these informal production companies are unwilling to do even face-saving projects and may not be able to do them.

Ernst said: "As countries recover economically, industry competition will become more intense in the future. Rather than waiting for others to burst our internal bubble, it is better for us to eliminate some security risks ourselves."

This is certainly not to kill some industries in East Africa, but to force them to adopt new technologies and equipment to improve production efficiency and enhance their market competitiveness.

If they cannot even do this, then they deserve to be strangled by the East African government and the market. After all, the East African government has given domestic companies ten years to grow wildly.

During this period, as long as the companies did not mess around, they had basically completed the initial capital accumulation and earned the first pot of gold. In the new round of economic development rules in East Africa, the government's goal is to allow them to use the money they earn to improve production efficiency, product quality or service.

……

April 1920.

The East African government has officially approved the "Copper Belt Economic Cooperation and Development Zone Plan".

This round of resource integration in the copper belt has officially begun, and towns in the copper belt such as Lubumbashi have begun to explore issues such as industrial collaboration and improving production efficiency.

Soon, a number of regional backbone enterprises, led by Lubumbashi and Kitwe, merged or were established. At the same time, relevant laws were introduced in the region to unify the production standards of the copper mining industry in the region.

The situation of "making the cake bigger" envisioned by De Boerne has officially begun, and Lubumbashi, as the leader, has indeed paid a lot of practical benefits in order to coordinate and balance the interests of all parties. After all, when this cake is ready, the city of Lubumbashi will be the biggest beneficiary.

Of course, if this cake is not cooked well, Lubumbashi will definitely suffer backlash, so in order to avoid accidents, the city of Lubumbashi has to spend real money to fully operate the Copper Belt Economic Development Zone.

De Boerne commented at the Kitwe Economic Development Conference: "Lubumbashi is now almost tied to the Copper Belt Economic Development Zone. The copper industry in the Copper Belt will be the responsibility of the Lubumbashi government in the future. We cannot sit idle and should now focus on other development areas."

“A city can only thrive if it is diversified, and our main learning target is the New Frankfurt City or Mbeya City.”

"In the coming period, our city's development focus will be on scientific research and manufacturing, which are closely related."

"The municipal government will provide funding to encourage a number of laboratories and scientific research institutions to be established in our city, especially in the fields of new materials, medicine, machinery, etc."

"In terms of manufacturing, we will encourage the development of light industry, promote the development of high-quality light industrial enterprises in the city, and introduce investment from external high-quality enterprises to our city."

"Then there is the service industry and ecology. We need to strengthen the quality of the service industry around the world and increase the visibility of our city's service industry to increase its attractiveness to the copper belt and even the whole country."

"In the ecological field, we will carry out environmental remediation activities, restore green mountains and clear waters, address land pollution, improve food production safety, restore vegetation in some mining areas, and restore river ecology, etc."

It can be said that while Lubumbashi was fully integrating the copper mining industry, the Kitwe Municipal Government, under the leadership of Deborn, embarked on a completely different development path, which has not yet been noticed by the Lubumbashi government.

(End of this chapter)