African Entrepreneurship Record

Aside from new western development, the Dar es Salaam City metropolitan area, three major new steel industry bases, the first major road and bridge three-dimensional traffic network, etc., during the first Five-Year Plan, the East African Government will continue to invest in foundational industrial areas, namely energy, mining, metallurgy, petroleum, chemical, electricity, automotive industries, etc.

”In 1905, the urbanization level in East Africa should increase by two to three percentage points, reaching at least twenty-five percent, striving to exceed Austria-Hungary and catch up with France. Our urbanization level is comparable to Austria-Hungary, but internally, Austria, Bohemia, and other regions have strong industrial strength, so we should face the gap. Among the Great Powers, the urbanization and industrialization levels of the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, and France are far above East Africa.”

”Therefore, aiming to surpass these four countries in a short time is unrealistic. Among these four, France has the lowest level of industrialization, but it is also above thirty percent, at least ten percentage points higher than our East Africa, and this gap cannot be offset in a short time.”

After all, in the late 19th century, the industrial development speed of all countries was relatively fast, including France. Since the 1880s until now, according to information obtained by the East African Government, the French Government is expected to invest 5 billion Francs in constructing domestic roads, ports, railways, and other infrastructure.

If there were no comparison with Germany and the United States at the same time, France’s industrialization progress would not be inferior to any nation, while East Africa’s industrial scale is increasing rapidly, East Africa’s population growth rate is also high, and when both offset each other, it becomes less impressive. France’s overall population changes little, making its industrial increase per capita appear much higher than East Africa’s.

This is also why East Africa needs to implement its national industrial development plan, which itself aims to rapidly advance the country’s industrialization process through increased domestic industrial investment in a short period of time.

However, East Africa remains relatively humble, setting the urbanization level in 1905 at twenty-five percent. This increase is not significantly faster than the development speeds of many normal capitalist countries. Take Germany, for instance, whose urbanization level rose from fifty percent in 1895 to about fifty-four percent currently. Similarly, in five years, Germany’s urbanization rate increased by about four percent, which also reflects the conservativeness in East Africa’s Five-Year Plan.

There’s no other choice; although industrialization is a key task for East Africa, Ernst must proceed steadily, East Africa is not the Soviet Union and cannot focus all energy on industrial construction through communication between the government and people.

One vital funding source for the Soviet Union’s Five-Year Plan is Soviet agriculture, and to provide industrial development funds, the Soviet Union long suppressed farm product prices. This is not unique to the Soviet Union; East Africa and any other country that develops industry will exploit agriculture because, before the industrial era, agriculture was the most crucial national income source.

Funding for national industrial development surely has to be sourced from agriculture. Take the United Kingdom as an example; its industrial development funds, aside from exploiting domestic farmers, were also completed through plunder. The UK’s most important early colonies, India and the United States at the time, were completely agricultural areas.

Thus, gathering early industrial development funds cannot avoid the plunder of agriculture, East Africa can only obtain some industrial funds through industrial production and trade activities from regions and countries relatively backward compared to East Africa, while East Africa’s own colonies are basically worthless remnants that can’t provide much value temporarily.

During the Five-Year Plan, industry became the absolute focus of East Africa’s national development, inversely, naturally leading to reduced emphasis on agriculture, but its position as the foundation of the nation will not change.

Ernst said: ”I have always emphasized the importance of agriculture, ensuring East Africans’ food security is fundamental. Therefore, correspondingly, our country must guarantee a certain basic amount of arable land, maintaining grain yields at least at 100 percent self-sufficiency, and then developing high value-added agriculture on this basis.”

As time progresses, East Africa increasingly focuses on cash crops and livestock farming, and currently, East Africa continues to have surplus grain production, so naturally, the government must change its mindset on this basis.

”For Great Powers, food security is vital. Some small countries can wholeheartedly develop high value-added agriculture by attaching their economies or affiliating with a major power, but for a Great Power like East Africa, it is clearly impossible to entrust the nation’s life to others.”

In the previous era, Dutch agriculture was very developed, and the Netherlands essentially adopted a business-like approach to agricultural development, with low input and high output as its basic principles.

The Netherlands basically abandoned low value-added agriculture, such as grain production, instead focusing on high value-added horticulture in vegetables, flowers, dairy, and livestock farming, agricultural product processing, and seed and livestock breeding industries.

The Netherlands’ agricultural exports were mainly flowers, vegetables, meat, dairy products, and various processed agricultural goods, whereas imports centered on low value-added grains, feed, raw oils, and tropical agricultural products that couldn’t be domestically produced.

The Netherlands relies on the European Union system. If other European nations block the Netherlands, its agriculture would naturally collapse, but being a small country, the Netherlands inherently has few choices and poses little threat. Additionally, due to advantages like geographical location, ports, rivers, etc., it can develop relatively well.

Clearly, the previous era’s Dutch agricultural development model cannot be replicated by a super-large country like East Africa unless other countries import East Africa’s agricultural products on a global scale, which is obviously impossible.

However, it is not representative of East Africa’s entire inability to replicate this agricultural model, as regional areas could, especially the Dar es Salaam City metropolitan area, which is economically developed with convenient transportation.

With East Africa’s industrial and urban development, there is naturally increasing domestic demand for high value-added agriculture, the primary being fruits and vegetables and livestock farming.

So Ernst stated: ”While ensuring national food security, developing peripheral urban livestock and cash crops is one of the significant goals for East African agriculture in the Five-Year Plan, and relatively rich produce supply is also a crucial means to siphon off agricultural populations into cities.”

This is to artificially enhance urban living standards, thus stimulating East African agricultural populations to move into cities, thereby promoting national industrialization development.

After all, East African agriculture is relatively unique, with farmer living standards relatively stable and low risk. If it were in other nations, it would not be conducive to urban development, the most typical being France, where during Napoleon’s era, French farmers had high living standards, limiting industrial and urban development within France to a certain extent.

Of course, improving urban residents’ treatment is only one of the East African Government’s methods to accelerate farmer migration to become citizens and workers. Under the East African system, large numbers of agricultural registrations move to urban work annually, especially after the 1980s, with decreasing demand for East African emigration, more focus is placed on administratively promoting the cities’ expansion of already branching agricultural residents.

However, this process isn’t too aggressive; urbanization must ultimately align with industrialization levels since excessive urbanization would lead to situations like previous Latin American countries, forming large impoverished urban populations. Ultimately, national industrial levels cannot provide more employment programs, which would inevitably lead to the booming of black and grey industries, causing societal order to collapse.