African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1199: Chapter 208: Southern Hemisphere Economic System

Debt development is the fundamental aspect of East Africa’s Third Five-Year Plan and New Economic Policy, and the European War is one of the important avenues to resolve the debt issue.

The main reason for the emergence of this model lies in the fact that East Africa’s first two Five-Year Plans greatly consumed the capital accumulated over the previous thirty years.

Over the past thirty years, East Africa accumulated a great amount of social wealth through various means such as exploiting its own cheap labor, freely utilizing Africa’s land resources, mineral resources, etc. After all, colonialism itself was a small investment for large returns. If excluding the military expenditure needed for colonialism, it’s almost an immensely profitable business.

However, similar to the United States, East Africa turned the colony into ”land from ancient times,” sacrificing the interests of nearly forty million Black indigenous people for the development of East Africa.

But colonialism cannot solve all problems. After all, East Africa cannot only focus on plundering; it must also take responsibility for construction issues. Agricultural reclamation in the 19th century, large-scale infrastructure, and building a national defense industry system required enormous expenditures in East Africa.

So, although East Africa appeared prosperous in the 19th century, it did not profit much. This is also why the first two Five-Year Plans in the 20th century were on a much smaller scale compared to the once enormous Soviet plans.

And the development model of the 19th century was never sustainable. By the early 20th century, East Africa’s Black Slaves were mostly depleted.

Looking back at the economic development trajectory of East Africa over the past fifty years, it can be roughly summarized in order: the land expansion period (colonial expansion), the great migration era, the agricultural construction era, and the industrial system construction era.

By 1914, East Africa had basically completed the construction of its national industrial system, forming a vast industrial system that covers the industrial sectors of national defense, heavy industry, and light industry.

Hence, Ernst said: ”The achievements of our country’s development over the past fifty years are glorious, but this also leads to the current new bottleneck in our country’s development. If we can smoothly overcome the European War, then undoubtedly our country will progress further and become one of the formulators of the future international order. Otherwise, we may stagnate, replicating Germany’s current passive situation.”

Currently, East Africa is indeed glorious, but lacking in foundation and missing corresponding international influence. This is the dilemma the United States faced after the First World War.

After the end of the First World War, despite the dazzling American economy, England and France could still manipulate the United States at the post-war conference. It can be said that at that time, America’s international status and its economic strength were completely unmatched.

And now, East Africa has become the world’s largest industrial nation. Therefore, as a later-developing country, East Africa will inevitably confront the two old empires, England and France, after the war.

So East Africa is not entirely carefree. If a newly developed country cannot advance further, even if it develops smoothly in the early stages, it is highly dangerous.

Just like Germany in 1914 or the Soviet Union in 1991, both got stuck at the last step, with the former choosing war as the final gamble and the latter opting for decay and death directly.

There are even more such cases in the 21st century in the previous life, many countries that did not cross the ”middle-income trap” ended up looking quite poor, with their economic miracles ending miserably, remaining as the grass under the Western discourse power ready to be harvested.

This is exactly what Ernst worries about. He continued, ”Once the European War ends, the victors will inevitably have time and energy to counterattack us, the later-developing countries, in order to maintain their position as top predators in the international order.”

”Therefore, taking advantage of the gap during the European War, establishing an economic moat centered on our homeland is the main direction of our current economic, military, political, and diplomatic efforts.”

”The so-called economic moat is an international trade system centered around East Africa, further consolidating our advantage in Nanyang and South America, acting as two wings supporting our country’s future development.”

This is essentially East Africa viewing numerous countries and regions in the southern hemisphere as its sphere of influence after all, geographically speaking, East Africa’s territory and economy are mainly in the southern hemisphere.

East Africa, as a core, has inherent maritime transportation advantages over South America and the East Coast of the Indian Ocean and South Pacific countries, making it easy to achieve dominance of East Africa over the southern hemisphere economy.

After pondering for a while, Ernst frankly stated: ”In the entire southern hemisphere, as well as some regions near the equator in the northern hemisphere, our East Africa is undoubtedly the most powerful economic entity.”

”Therefore, establishing a southern hemisphere economic system centered on East Africa is indeed a mandate from heaven, allowing us to transform from a regional power into a truly global power.”

The southern hemisphere economic system sounds grand indeed as it involves three continents: Africa, South America, and Oceania, taking up a significant portion of the world’s map.

The introduction of this concept, in fact, already implies Ernst’s initial thought on reshaping the international order, akin to the United States’ ”Monroe Doctrine,” or perhaps the ”Belt and Road Initiative” of the 21st-century Far East Empire, a step that any great world power must take.

And furthermore, it’s about ideological concepts, like America’s ”democratic system,” ”Cold War thinking,” or the Soviet Union’s ”communism,” and the Far East Empire’s ”Community of Shared Future for Mankind.”

Ernst currently has no particular ideas for the latter, after all, engaging in ideological competition in a monarchial country like East Africa is like King Wei of Qi making bets in horse racing—doomed to fail.

Instead, the vague ideological plan of the ”Community of Shared Future” by the Far East Empire is something worth East Africa considering in the future.

This could be considered as Ernst’s self-awareness; no one knows better than Ernst the current stitched monster imperialism of East Africa. Speaking of which, this is quite like the previous life’s Far East Empire, as when planning and market are combined, the Far East Empire also turned into an oddity, unappealing to both sides.

Ultimately, it is still a competition of strength. With increased strength, other countries will naturally lean towards you; even something black can be praised as white, and once East Africa’s industry fully develops and reaches a leading level, others will willingly praise the industrial waste of East Africa as being ”sweet-smelling.”

And as Ernst presents these concepts, East African government officials are invigorated like chickens injected with life.

Currently, global hegemony is certainly wishful thinking, but southern hemisphere hegemony becomes much more accessible, and by controlling the economy, trade, culture, politics, and military in the southern hemisphere, East Africa can build a massive regional market.

This way, even if one day East Africa is excluded from the global market by certain countries, it can rely on this small system to live well because the lower limit of this southern hemisphere economic system is much higher than the Warsaw Pact system in the previous life.

The economic dependence between Warsaw Pact countries relies on land transportation, and the cost is far less than that of the southern hemisphere economic system, as East Africa is a country situated between two oceans, or three if overseas territories are included, making maritime advantages significant.

And the scale of the southern hemisphere economic system described by Ernst is clearly incomparable to the Warsaw Pact, with a much higher upper limit indeed, as alone Brazil, its land area exceeds eight million square kilometers. Moreover, other countries like Australia, Argentina, and Peru are not considered small countries in Europe.

Of course, the current economic strength of these regions certainly cannot compare with European countries, but this is just beneficial for East African operations.

If they were not backward, East Africa would have no opportunity to gather these countries together, and once they develop, they would vie for regional discourse power, becoming opponents of East Africa.

So for southern hemisphere countries, East Africa should learn from the United States, using coercion and inducement to forcibly drag them onto East Africa’s economic bandwagon.

The United States at the early 20th century, in comparison to other blunt colonialists, was the ”light of civilization,” but in reality, the United States was just one of the ravens among the great power group that appeared less black.