African Entrepreneurship Record

If one does not consider economic and social factors, the scale of East Africa and Tsarist Russia, the corresponding steel output should not be so greatly surpassed by the United States and Germany. East Africa is understandable, after all, its development history is short. Now being able to achieve the fourth-largest high-speed rail production in the world is already an outstanding achievement.

As for Tsarist Russia, it is not short of resources, especially in the early stages of industrialization, resources are even more abundant than in East Africa. East Africa surpassing Tsarist Russia is due to its ability to integrate East Africa’s mineral, energy, and land resources through national power.

Of course, there are also conditions created by timely opportunities. Since the 1880s, East Africa has already become one of the largest infrastructure countries in the world, surpassing the United States in the 1990s, becoming the largest infrastructure country in the world in fields such as highways, water networks, city construction, and railways, ushering in a boom period. What supports East Africa’s large-scale infrastructure is precisely the forming population scale and maturing population structure.

Infrastructure construction has driven the continued strong demand for steel, cement, and wood. This is one of the important internal reasons for East Africa’s steel industry to rise abruptly.

Without mature population structure and scale breakthrough, East Africa could not catch up with those old strong countries. Of course, Black labor is also an important factor not to be ignored. The contribution of Blacks in East Africa’s infrastructure even surpasses the labor force Emperor Yang of Sui used in constructing the Grand Canal.

Under the First Five-Year Plan, the steel output target set by East Africa is actually not too aggressive, at least with Ernst’s emphasis, the idea that man can conquer nature does not apply to East Africa. The current steel expansion plan set by East Africa is completely within East Africa’s capabilities.

After concluding the discussion on the steel industry, the East African Government started discussing the transportation industry. If it were the 19th century, the focus of East African Government discussions in the transportation field would definitely be on railroads.

However, with the East African national railway network basically forming in the 1890s and the development of the automobile industry, the government’s attention to railways has somewhat declined.

Nonetheless, the decline in attention does not affect the fact that railways are still the leading brother in East Africa’s transportation construction domain.

The Minister of Railways, Andre, said: ”During the attempted planned economy at the end of the 19th century, there was conflict between the goals set by our Ministry of Railways and the Planning Committee. However, the final data did not meet our internal department’s optimistic predictions, so based on previous experience, under the guidance of the Planning Committee, the threshold for the railway construction task during East Africa’s first Five-Year Plan is set at fifty thousand kilometers.”

”This means during the First Five-Year Plan, completing at least fifty thousand kilometers of new railway plans to further improve the national railway network, strive to build the world’s third-largest railway network, just after Europe and North America, by 1905, with a total railway mileage close to or exceeding one hundred and fifty thousand kilometers.”

”In addition to the construction of a small number of mainline railways, the focus will be on intercity railway transport construction, especially railway construction within the Dar es Salaam City conurbation and various industrial areas.”

”At the same time, the construction of the Western Railway is our key work direction from 1901 to 1905. Although the Western mainline railway is relatively complete, in terms of railway network density, it falls far behind the Middle Eastern regions.”

”Under the guidance of the Planning Committee, the Railway Department and Transport Department intend to build a three-dimensional continental bridge network of railways, highways, and waterways between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean. This is our medium-term planning scenario to achieve unimpeded personnel, logistics, and industry between the East African coasts.”

A continental bridge generally refers to a land channel connecting two oceans, typically using railways as the backbone. In fact, with the completion of the Central Railway, it has become a land bridge connecting the Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean.

This is the world’s earliest continental bridge, which was the North American continental bridge built by the United States. Before the opening of the Panama Canal, the North American continental bridge played a significant role in boosting the U.S. economy.

Because of the relatively long and narrow distribution of East African territory from north to south, there are already two continental bridges built in East Africa: Central Railway and Whale Bay Port–Inhambane Railway. Central Railway’s east-west line is also known as East Africa’s First Continental Bridge, while Whale Bay Port–Inhambane Railway is referred to as East Africa’s Second Continental Bridge, being an important railway mainline connecting the two oceans.

In fact, the Northern Railway also has the potential to form a continental bridge in the future, it just needs to connect with the western Belgian or French, German colonies, but from what East Africa understands, currently, Belgium, France, and Germany have no plans to build even an inch of railway in their colonies bordering East Africa.

This is mainly because the colonies near East Africa from the three countries have climates too complex, in the core area of Africa’s tropical rainforest climate, wetlands and rainforests spread everywhere, and the population is sparse.

The developed river networks in the locality are also a significant reason the three countries do not plan to build railways in their colonies near East Africa. After all, relying on ships is sufficient to penetrate deep into the hinterlands of various countries’ colonies, there’s no need to construct railways.

Moreover, apart from Belgium paying more attention to Belgian Congo, France does not pay much attention to Gabon, nor does Germany to Cameroon. Both colonies were already underdeveloped, had a low population density, and low output; building railroads there might not recover costs for decades.

After all, in building railways in colonies, steel and other raw materials can only be procured from the homeland or East Africa, directly doubling the construction costs of railroads. If railroads were really built in colonies, it would be a foolish move.

If it were colonies like India, constructing some railways, recovering costs and profiting would be faster. The total population of the colonies in the Congo rainforest basin from Belgium, Germany, and France might not even reach two million. Among them, Belgium has brought in only tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants. German and French colony populations cannot be too many either.

Of course, they may also be considering their national colonial security maintenance, after all, given East Africa’s gigantic presence nearby. If railways really penetrated through, it would facilitate East Africa in directly invading and occupying the colonies of the three countries.

Not to mention them, even East Africa, the local powerhouse, avoids the Congo rainforest while building domestic railways, currently apart from Hesse, Cabinda, and Kinshasa railways, the confirmed rainforest railway projects only include Bangui Railway.

The Bangui Railway is one of the key projects in East Africa’s new western development, part of the extension line of the Atlantic Coast Railway.

The Minister of Transportation, Liu Yideville, followed Andre’s words: ”Regarding the construction of East Africa’s first continental bridge, the focus of our Transportation Department lies in the construction of roads and waterways. Currently, the East African Grand Canal plan is proceeding in an orderly manner, expected to be fully completed before 1905, which can also be a key project of the first Five-Year Plan. At the same time, during the first Five-Year Plan, we plan to construct several small-scale canals in the west with the Ministry of Water Resources.”

”Regarding road construction, it is currently a new focus in the field of transportation construction in our country. With the increase in national motor vehicles, the requirements for roads are getting higher and higher, while many East African domestic roads are still gravel roads or even mud roads.”

”Therefore, in constructing the first continental bridge, during the first Five-Year Plan, we plan to complete the renovation of thirty percent of first-class roads in the Middle Eastern regions, focusing on building roads in the west, and all built according to hardened road standards, of which asphalt pavement will account for at least twenty percent of the share.”

If the first continental bridge’s three-dimensional transportation network is constructed, the connection between the east and west of East Africa will undoubtedly be tighter before the end of 1905, which can simultaneously promote the development of the East African national capital, Rhein City, as well as the entire central region.