Railway as Economic Infrastructure for the People
1. Safety methods, rules and regulations, right down to the last helmet, glove, face mask and waste disposal that can be checked by organizations that also report back to government agencies and insurance companies will be useful contributions towards self sustainability.
2. Example: If insurance companies want to increase insurance contributions, they could bring such deficiencies forward as part of their argumentation.
3. The goal hereby is to maintain high safety standards and save money.
Economics
1. Due to the fact that Africa is very big and railway lines will be very long, it might be advantageous for governments concerned with coordinating implementation of infrastructure, to have a factory built for every component that is required for the job along the same length of track, even if each factory is in a different country.
2. The railway line would then automatically be self supporting.
3. That probably means finding out which components are required and if those suppliers would be interested in joint ventures, instead of just a one off order.
That would mean that Africans will need to have:
A. People who know or can learn to know what they need in order to build a railway.
B. People who can search out the world market and find those components and or earmark those companies for product development and production cooperation.
C. People who can actually negotiate and bring the component production to the side of the railway line, where the output can be picked up and distributed as needed.
D. With the African Union involved with it's free trade zone plans, it would, where possible and reasonable, thereby be advantageous to make components to specifications that are mainly for own use as well as for export to other African countries.
E. Once African countries are able to trade with each other without the need for intermediaries, the low price production would match the low price raw material on offer and bring in external customers.
4. In the interest of none monopolization, the following is important.
5. Persons or groups of persons (companies) that have a majority investments in any one of the Major Sections stated on the main page, can not hold investments in any of the other sections that exceed an amount that is held in their selected major section.
6. Example:
A person or persons may own one or more (SHE) in different parts of a country or the continent, that can be expanded as the need arises, but it would be a conflict of interest, if the same person or group of persons owned parts of the other sections such that their votes across the collection could mean veto rights that encompasses more than their selected major section.
7. It will be the job of the persons who buy into this project to show or prove that they are not directly or indirectly involved with veto rights in more than one section, either directly or by proxy.
8. That means possible veto rights in one section and simple voting rights in up to 3 other sections.
9. Because land is people's property, the full ownership of a (SHE) is limited to 3 land lease periods. Stocks and share ownership can be any length from 1 second to 2 land lease periods.
10. (SHE), KW electric power price increases that have no proven practical justification, will not be upheld in arbitrational and or judicial type rulings, unless others that are considered to be of an higher authority, overrides such decisions.
11. The first KWh price for electric power from a (SHE) will usually be dictated by the cost of building the system spread over a given number of years together with the expected number of customers over the same number of years.
12. It should be checked, if (SHEs) are being bought and sold, without any value being added in that process and prices are being increased as a result.
13. Example:
A pay raise for employees is a practical justification for a price increase.
14. External component suppliers who buy into companies in order to be able to give instructions about which components should be used would need to show that they only take 20% of any resulting price increase and the rest goes to the employees or the company as a whole, for things such as improving working conditions etc.
Fostering Entrepreneurs and Interactive Dependency in Business
1. In the interest of a strong system, it would be up to government agencies to ensure that for any given year, the same person or group of persons can not get permission for the construction of a (SHE) and associated power link, if there are others waiting in line for the same in the same area.
2. That can be checked through the allocation of the land required by the (SHE).
3. The more pillars, meaning the more (SHE) owners, the better the long term chance of survival beyond the life span of the first persons that initialize and start the system, particularly when one considers the fact that at this time a stocks and shares system that can be used by Africans is not developed or available in Africa.
4. A reminder is placed here that it has been suggested in the section Power Cable (PC) that the electric power lines can also be used for communication and other internet type activity.
5. As part of the path to independence, that function would be ideal for Africa internal stocks and shares activity that is isolated from the outside world, except where necessary.
6. High yield acreage:
As far as land requirements go, some will say 4 acres and some will say 4 hectares is needed. Both values can be correct as a starting point for a 1...5MW (SHE) with room thereby included for some expansion.
7. It is not forbidden for a SHE owner to increase it's size to whatever land availability and local
governments will allow.
8. It is not recommended here that business contracts and agreements, including land ownership agreements with the government, be made with individual persons or group of persons that last more than 50 years.
9. If anyone feels fit enough, extensions can be negotiated, as a general rule Africans should start thinking about slowing down after 50 years on the treadmill.
10. Observation has shown that land ownership (government allocated land) for the period of bank loans seem to become very important, especially if other types of collaterals are not as readily available.
11. Persons can even go across borders to build and thereby increase mutual dependency.
12. Cross border (SHE) construction and operation will help to make sure that trains really do get to within 5 to 10km behind the borders of neighboring countries.
International Transit Charges
1. Transit fees for a whole carriage can be paid at a fixed rate, so that pass through traffic will not stop in a country that it passes through for more than a few minutes in order to check that the transit fees really have been paid in advance or are certain to be paid for the defined transit period.
2. Transit fees are necessary, because they represent the same thing for pass through travelers as passenger fare for internal travelers.
3. Agreements between individual countries or groups within those countries not to pay each other transit fees is not a valid form of general purpose economics.
4. That means that it may cost more to cross a large or long country than it would to cross a small country.
5. With electric trains, the problem of finding the amount of resources used is easily solved, because the amount of electric power used can be easily read from a reliable measuring instrument onboard each train as well as on the sides of the track, so that correlation of values can be easily made.
6. The function is important, because timing is of the essence in a situation where pass through traffic will use the same train lines as in country traffic.
7. The priority conflict is solved by allowing in country traffic to move to shunt lines when pass through traffic is competing for use of a given section of train line at the same time.
8. Persons that build (SHEs) may prefer to build them on the borders, as long as there is space and need for them, because particularly with so called land locked countries, it would increase their acceptance chances at application time.
(SHE) Owner Income Sources:
Power Cable (PC) - also supply homes
Telecommunication Cable (TCC)
Persons Carriage (PCR)
Goods Carriage (GCR)
Inserted Data on Power Line Bus bars
Sale of Heat for (Hot Water etc.)
Example:
Edible goods processing plants may position themselves around the SHE and get cheap electricity and hot water at prices that allow them to be able to start and run a business.
Home Grown Knowledge Base:
1. One possibility would be to have technical schools and places of higher education build a demonstration model of about 100KW and then make the information gathered during that process the defacto standard starting point for others.
2. Persons that want to build such solar power units on a commercial basis would be given access to all of the information, so that they can know and keep to rules and regulations etcetera.
3. They would also have a ready made collection of knowledgeable workers to choose from.
Train Carriage Example:
1. Expand by having the train carriage producers come to your country, as production and or wholesale.
2. An important advantage is that those companies can return money printed in your country as being equivalent to their own.
3. That means that your own country will also have their portion of the generated money recognized internationally as the equivalent.
4. That would then be good for purchasing more foreign goods.
5. Relying on the export of unprocessed minerals alone to finance much more than infrastructure and "startups" would leave the population of a country too low in the "value added chain" for them to be able to pay for and achieve relevant social development.
6. Most companies are so called "trading unions" with further special names added in order to identify their activity more closely, therefore the decisions about what happens to money returned to foreign countries will be the internal affair of those countries.
Land Acquisition
1. In Africa, finding or providing land along railway lines should not be a problem.
2. One would only need to make sure that the local population is maybe part owner and or otherwise involved, so that after the construction workers are gone, they will not dismantle it to find out what it is.
3. In order to spread the so called risk and convince money lenders, the required land could also be allocated to small villages for the period that is required in order to payback any loans as well as to gain some profit.
4. The people could then use the extra energy that is above and beyond train track needs for their own use and sell the rest to others, who do not yet have any and can not afford solar panels.
5. That would be something like internal development aid or small scale wealth redistribution, where it can be seen by local governments that such efforts are required.
6. That could mean that such villages could maybe even get small loans that are secured using the profits from the railway system and even pay something into local or national pension and or medical funds.
7. The social fund for the needy would take on equal necessity.
8. Solar energy villages would hire a management team to do the necessary work and not contravene any of their local laws and beliefs.
9. The local governments should provide the necessary environment to allow that sort of thing to happen, so that persons will not mistakenly print money for themselves that goes beyond standard income for work done.