The lack of navigable rivers and coastal access in Africa and Central Asia famously gets the blame for their underdevelopment. Being landlocked on all sides is especially poor, or so we’re told.
What is a poor landlocked country to do? There was a time when I imagined roads, rail and regional integration were the answer. Now I know I dream too small. I need to dream like… an engineer.
A 1954 book called Engineer’s Dreams: Great Projects That Could Come True collects some of the mega-scale engineering projects dreamed up by mid-century. Some of them, like the Channel Tunnel, came to pass. Others… not so much.
One in particular was a plan to totally reconfigure the interior of Africa by creating a series of huge inland seas. The plan was originated by the German architect and engineer Herman Șrgel in 1935. His plan was to dam the Congo River where it passes through a string of deep, narrow gorges after it merges with one of its tributaries, the Kwa River. It would create a lake 350,000 square miles in area Рlarger than the areas of California, Nevada and Oregon combined.
They are not kidding. There is even a map:
I randomly picked up this story at Xefer, who continues:
Once the lake filled, it would be forced to overflow from another one of its tributaries, the Ubangi, into the Shari River which is one of the feeders for the present day Lake Chad.
Lake Chad would swell to the dimensions it was thought to have had over 10,000 years ago, spreading across the Ahaggar plateau. A river would then be created that would lead through Algeria, turn east into Tunisia and then eventually empty into the Mediterranean Sea at the Gulf of Gabes. This river could made navigable allowing ships to directly access the interior of Africa.
Wow. What were they going to do with all those Congolese and Chadians? Give them beach-side holiday properties? Millions of USAID water wings?
Update: Commenter Sebastian points out: “What were they going to do with all those Congolese and Chadians?” uhm Chris – which part of German engineer 1935 did you not get?
“What were they going to do with all those Congolese and Chadians?”
uhm Chris – which part of German engineer 1935 did you not get?
Quite ironically, nowadays Lake Chad has diminished its size to the point of near-disparition…
-alfanje
Dandy book. The things that struck me, 15-20 years back, were that (a) most of the ideas Ley described were gargantuan civil engineering projects that would have looked perfectly plausible and even reasonable in say 1900 — had people at the time access to late 20th century technology — but that civil engineering had by the late 20th century simply lost any hold on public imagination, much as we are told that manned spaceflight has dropped from the consciousness of anyone born after 1969. (b) most of Ley’s proposed projects would probably have had horrendous ecological effects, which almost no one living in 1900 or even 1950 would have been able to conceive.
Willie Ley is mostly remembered these days as a proponent of spaceflight in the 1950′s and early 1960′s; it’s always worth noting that people such as he had more than one dimension, and more than one goal.
-mike shupp
President Bingu wa Mutharika in Malawi envisions reaching the Indian Ocean by water. I was told an Australian actually tried to make the trip from Malawi to the ocean on a short canoe, but had quite a few issues along the way. He took some video and presented to the Society of Malawi. I tried to find a link for you but came up short. Much like wa Mutharika’s idea.
@ Kim Dionne:
And much like D. Livingstone’s idea that came 100 years prior to Ley.