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0:00 So, I came across a story a few days ago that didn't make any sense. Egypt's president had just flown 5,000 kilometers to Tanzania for a state visit. At first, I didn't think much of it. African presidents travel all the time. But then I looked at the trade between the two countries. Last year, Egypt and Tanzania traded just $84 million worth of goods. I actually checked the number twice because I thought I had read it wrong. For two countries, more than 130 million people between them, that's surprisingly small. So I kept asking myself one question. Why make a trip like this for a relationship that barely exist? And the more I look, the stranger
0:46 everything became. Yes, they they signed two agreements. Yes, they talked about trade. But every report I open kept pointing to the same direction. Not to trade, not to diplomacy, to ports, to farmland, and somehow to deny. That was the moment I realized this story wasn't really about a presidential visit. It was a story about the map. And by the end of this video, I think you will see why Egypt believes that map will shape Africa's future. July 18th that Islam red carpet on guard the whole thing and by the end of it two agreements. Now those two agreements are smaller than you would think. One on transport and the other on electricity. Two pieces of paper.
1:34 But then listen to what they are talking about around those two pieces of paper. Egypt wants cargo running from Dylam all the way up to its own ports SNA and Safaga. Follow it with me out of Da into the Indian Ocean north through Swiss into the Mediterranean. That's three seas in one run and Egypt offered to help make the port at Da bigger while they at it. At the business forum, LCC sounded fed up. Aram reported him telling the room to hurry up. He sounded like they should stop signing things and start building them. Let the businesses run it. Then you hear the tenting inside. They are talking about something else entirely. food irrigation, cattle farming. Those are two different presidents in the same room describing two different deals.
2:22 He wants to move things. She wants to grow things. Remember that it comes back. Anyway, $84 million doesn't pay for your routes through three C's. And I had been reading it wrong. I assumed Egypt wanted to sell to Tanzanians. Look behind Tanzania instead. Zambia, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Malawi, six countries, most of them landlocked. Almost everything they sell has to cross somebody else's country before he can get on a ship. And Tanzania sits at the front of two of the most inland routes on that map. All of it comes through here. Now, Egypt went there for the door. Now say you sell beans just outside campalap and you want to sell beans to Egypt right
3:11 now at this current situation. Now your beans is going to pass through four different hands with custom officers at every stop. If this new route works that same trip gets about 10 days shorter, same coffee, same buyer, 10 days you get back. Now do that a million times over. That's the price. So Cairo read the map properly and that's where I got suspicious because countries that read maps so well doesn't just make one move and stop. So I went looking 5 months before that visit African business reported Egypt was pushing for a road that runs the whole length of the continent that is from Cairo to Cape Town. Same July, Tanzania's Daily News says DA and Cairo
4:00 have agreed on a continental road project. Same week as the handshake, Egyptian investors are signing into an industrial zone. And then the one I didn't expect, Egypt was looking at a second port too. Tanzanian Business Press reported them eyeing Bagamayo. Two ports same coast. See, one port, you are a customer. Two ports, you are in a conversation about where the traffic goes. Egypt's own paper had a name for all of this. By the way, Al Haram Weekly run an editorial called Turning South. Because for years, Cairo behaved like a Middle Eastern capital sitting inside Africa. The phone calls went to Riyad to Washington. Africa was just the neighborhood and
4:47 never the market. That's shifting. And the thing Egypt is using isn't soldiers, it's cargo. Then I found a date that really bothered me. These two set up a joint business council back in 2002. That is 20 years ago. And basically nothing came out of it. So what? Woke it up. And this is where I have to be careful with you. So stay with me. Gay online described that visit as Egypt looking at Tanzanian farms, logistic hubs and Nile corporation one trip all three. Then French outlet Africans went further. They wrote about a line Kyrie is drawing from the Nile to the Indian Ocean. Now I'm not seated here telling you there is some secret water plan. Nobody has published
5:36 that. That's how those two reports framed it and I want you to hear me say that clearly. But Tanzania is in the Nile basin and Egypt has not treated water as a small thing. Not in the last 100 years, not through the fight over the dam upstream. Not now. So when Egyptian money starts moving towards farmland and irrigation in a Nile basin country, what's actually being bought? I don't know. And anyone who tells you they know for sure is guessing with a straight face. You know pocket I will tell you what to watch for because there is something about that map that had been bugging me from the start and it took me a while to work out why I had seen the line before. About 100
6:27 years ago somebody else drew a line from Cairo down to the bottom of Africa. The Cape to Cairo railway. Rails running the spine of the continent never finished. Bits got built, gaps stayed open, and pieces of it still sit still going nowhere. And that railway was drawn in Europe for Europe. It was there to take things out. Copper out, gold out, cotton out. People here carried the load and never bought a thing from it. Same ground, nearly the same line, different hands on the pen this time. And you think that matters? Two African governments in an African room arguing about port and cattle. No colonial office, no contract written in somebody else's capital. You see, there
7:14 is a problem I keep thinking about. When the music changes, the dance also changes. Music's changed. Whether we know the steps, that's the question. Though I should say there is still no railway between east and north Africa. Egypt is building fast trains at the top. Tanzania is building new reels at the bottom. They don't meet. Which brings me to the beat almost nobody covered. The signs to memorandums. A memorandum is a promise to keep talking. It doesn't move any money. So I went looking for the things that would tell me this is real. A budget. Couldn't find one. Somebody in charge of it couldn't find one. A finished date, nothing. A ship, a schedule, an operator for that
8:00 mu line, nothing. Which doesn't make it fake. Big projects do start like this. But right now, this thing lives in speeches. And even with money, there is a harder problem waiting. The World Bank says Tanzania's transport system isn't properly joined up. roads and rail that slows goods down. Now picture the gym, ship ducks, container comes off, needs a train, then a truck, then a border, then paperwork, then another border. You lose days at every single joint. You see, we we all love him in concrete. Crilliant on TV. The thing that actually kills African businesses is a firm and two offices that won't share a database. you can build the best port on the
8:49 continent and still lose to a country that has an average port and good paperwork. And then I found the number that stopped me properly. In the first 3 months of this year, Egyptian goods going into Tanzania went up to about $11 million. Tanzanian goods going the other way dropped sharply. Now think about that. Nothing has been built, not even one meter. And the flow is already leaning one way because a route doesn't make good. It moves what you have already got faster and cheaper. It makes you better or bigger at what you already do. Egypt sells things that came out of a factory. Tanzania mostly sells things that came out of the ground. Cashews before roasting, minerals before refining,
9:40 cotton before spinning. The money gets made later in somebody else's country. So, you build a lovely road between a farm and a factory which end gets rich. Now, back to that trip. Cairo flew 5,000 kilometers to buy a seat on a map that isn't worth much yet. Buy early and it's cheap. You get to set the terms. If you turn up late or when it's busy, you are just another customer. How many governments on this continent are making moves for 2040? And there is a bigger thing sitting behind all of it. We all signed the African free trade agreement, celebrated it, photographed it. In most places, it's still paper. Paper doesn't carry cargo routes do. And Africa
10:26 hasn't really got one that works from end to end. Whoever built the first one that properly works writes the rule book. West Africa could run a coastal line. The Great Lakes could build a spine. Southern Africa could tie its factories straight to its ports. So what came out of that room might end up being a model everybody copies. One last thing and I'll let you go. For about 150 years, Africa has been very good at building routes. Rails to the coast, roads to the ports, pipes to the tanker. Beautifully built all of them. Every single one pointing out we build the road. Somebody else built the factory. The road worked perfectly. So I am watching this one closely. Concrete is the easy but money always stands up for concrete. It's what goes inside that
11:17 is hard. Send ro cash north while processing food comes south and this route will work beautifully and the gap gets wider faster than before. Build the factory first and the exact same road makes Tanzany reach. Same route two different endings. So here is the thing I would like you to take away the next time your government announces a port, a railway, a highway, anything with reborn and a shovel. Don't ask what it cost. Ask what's going inside the containers that go out. If the answer is the same raw stuff we have been shipping for 60 years, we have just built a faster version of the old deal. If it's something an African factory touched first, then the concrete was worth every
12:03 cent. and watch three things this year. Whether either of those papers turn into a real contract with a real budget, whether that shipping line ever gets an actual ship, and whether anybody start talking about the Nile part out loud, that last one is the threat I'm pulling. Everyone is watching that corridor. The river might be the next story. See you in my next video. Bye.
