"Also, immigrants must still be directed primarily toward the inland Matabele Province, so we cannot alter the overall direction, especially since the eastern region still has far too many immigrants compared with other areas."
Though Ernst said so, the eastern region's population was not actually large. Even excluding the arid regions of Somalia and Kenya, the east still possessed nearly two million square kilometers of land. With fewer than twenty million people spread across such an expanse, it seemed exceedingly sparse.
"Matabele Province is an industrial province, so its demand for industrial workers is extremely strong. Yet because it lies inland, Matabele Province has a relatively small population, and the immigration market is currently sluggish. Therefore, the government must exercise subjective initiative in job assignments, striving to spread East Africa's population outward from the east toward the interior and other regions."
A powerful government made such matters more convenient. The East African government controlled national resources and used those advantages to deploy its citizens. It was much like the Soviet Union in his previous life: if jobs were set up in Siberia, then people had to go whether they wanted to or not.
As one of East Africa's key agricultural and industrial provinces, Matabele Province also offered the most employment opportunities. Naturally, it had plenty of positions.
Matabele Province's sole drawback was its transportation, a crippling weakness. Although the railway passed through Matabele Province, rail transport cost more than water transport, while East Africa's inland river shipping suffered from inherent deficiencies overall. This was not something manpower and policy could change. Lake shipping, on the other hand, was flourishing. Shipping on the Great Lake, Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika, Lake Malawi, and Lake Turkana had all developed quite well.
Speaking of East Africa's railway, only fifteen hundred kilometers had been newly