Xingguo Reservoir and the accompanying Xingguo Dam could also be regarded as a calling card of East Africa's Fourth Five-Year Plan period. After all, Water Conservancy Construction—especially hydropower station construction—was the kind of project that easily left its name in history.
For instance, the Hoover Hydroelectric Power Station in the United States in Ernst's previous life, the Dnieper River hydroelectric power station in the Soviet Union, the Three Gorges Hydroelectric Power Station of the Far East Empire, and the Itaipu Hydroelectric Power Station of Brazil and Paraguay.
Although the Xingguo Hydroelectric Power Station was not as difficult to build as those water conservancy projects, it had secured the world's largest reservoir—Xingguo Reservoir—through a clever shortcut. That alone ensured its future renown across the world.
Naturally, East Africa had not built the Xingguo Hydroelectric Power Station merely for fame. There were profound strategic considerations behind it.
The most important of them was, naturally, water resources. Building Xingguo Reservoir meant that East Africa would gain an additional 200 billion cubic meters of usable freshwater resources.
This water would originally have flowed into the Nile River, eventually passing through the Nile River sections of Sudan and Egypt before flowing into the Mediterranean Sea.
As everyone knew, although the Nile River was the world's longest river, its water volume was not abundant. Its total annual runoff was only a little over 80 billion cubic meters, while even the Yellow River of the Far East Empire, which had relatively little water, had annual runoff exceeding 50 billion cubic meters.
Thus, water resources were relatively scarce throughout the Nile River Basin, and this limited water had to be divided among Egypt, including Sudan, the Abyssinian Empire, Ethiopia, and East Africa.
The White Nile River flowing through East Africa already had a relatively low water volume, so