African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1214: Chapter 223: Advantages of the Economic System

At present, 28 percent of East Africa’s national power supply comes from hydropower, which is an astonishingly large share; after all, in the previous life, even in the Far East Empire, hydropower accounted for less than 20 percent.

Yet East Africa’s hydropower resources are far from fully developed and still have huge room for growth. The reason hydropower development accounts for such a large proportion in East Africa, apart from natural advantages, is also closely related to the country’s specific conditions.

After all, most regions of East Africa have a demand for water storage, because the domestic climate in East Africa is mainly tropical savanna, divided into rainy and dry seasons. This predestines East Africa to build a large number of water conservancy projects to impound the water from the rainy season and ensure water for industrial and agricultural use.

And the construction of man-made reservoirs is naturally the top priority in water conservancy projects. Generally speaking, in order to improve utilization efficiency, most man-made reservoirs are designed with power generation functions as well, so East Africa’s utilization rate of hydropower development is relatively high.

Wang Hailong said, ”Because of the existence of the Congo Basin, for East Africa this is equivalent to holding a gigantic hydropower cornucopia. If it can be fully developed, it can solve the majority of East Africa’s power supply problem.”

”However, compared with hydropower, thermal power still holds an absolute advantage in East Africa’s current electricity supply, reaching about 70 percent. And due to regional energy characteristics, different fuels are used as the basis for power generation. For example, the southern part of East Africa relies on coal, some regions in the north use oil or natural gas, and in the west, besides hydropower, oil is also widely used as fuel for power plants.”

”In 1910, East Africa’s electricity access rate already reached an astonishing 62 percent, basically achieving universal electrification in all towns and partial coverage in rural areas. Even up to now, East Africa is still the only country in the world whose electricity access rate exceeds 50 percent.”

Thanks to East Africa’s first two Five-Year Plans, during this period East Africa’s power sector formally completed the construction of a nationwide East African national power grid. And because of technological progress, East Africa at that time had already obtained independent intellectual property rights in both hydropower and thermal power, achieving a new round of breakthroughs in power production technology.

If compared with the region and countries where East Africa was located in the previous life, these figures can only be described as defying common sense. After all, in the previous life, the region and countries where East Africa was located—those small African states—were among the lowest in the world in terms of electricity access. Even by the 21st century, many places still had no electricity.

Yet in this timeline, East Africa is the world’s largest power producer and power consumer, with its electricity access rate sitting firmly at number one in the world.

Of course, the price has also been enormous. East Africa poured massive amounts of capital, manpower, and time into these efforts. During the first two Five-Year Plans, investment in electricity and other infrastructure was simply astronomical, and this was also an important reason why the Third Five-Year Plan in East Africa faced a shortage of funds.

After all, when these infrastructures were being built, East Africa certainly felt elated, but the vast resources poured in over a short period cannot generate returns as quickly as light industry. Their investment cycles are often ten, or even twenty years.

This is also a manifestation of ”eating the grain of tomorrow in advance,” so it was one of the important reasons why East Africa was so eager to push for the outbreak of World War I.

Only with the outbreak of World War I could East Africa’s production lines be rapidly rolled out, turning these infrastructures into catalysts for production and, relying on the international market vacated during the war, digest the construction成果 of the first two Five-Year Plans.

After listening to Wang Hailong’s account, Commander Zhang and the other official representatives from the Far East Empire all fell somewhat silent; the gap was simply too large.

”These days in Dar es Salaam City, I’ve noticed that the streetlights in Dar es Salaam City are on almost all night long. The whole city, even at night, is as bright as daytime.”

”Every household in Dar es Salaam City is connected to the grid, and many East African families use a considerable number of household appliances. Take the Dongfang Hotel we’re staying in, for example: electric lights, telephones, radios, phonographs—everything is available. The development of Western countries nowadays is downright terrifying!”

”So this is what they call electrification? We haven’t even caught up with the age of steam vehicles, and now we’re being left far behind again by Western society.”

From the perspective of the Far East Empire, East Africa is fully and completely one of the Western countries; after all, in terms of geographical position, East Africa is indeed to the west of the Far East Empire.

Of course, the East African Government and the majority of East African citizens have never seen themselves that way. East Africa’s self-positioning is actually similar to the Americans’ ”new continent” concept and does not lump itself together with Europe.

Although Africa does not belong to the ”New World,” this is mainly because North Africa has long been involved in world history. After all, whether it is European or Arab civilization, neither can bypass the North Africa region.

But south of the Sahara Desert and North Africa are like two different worlds. At least in Ernst’s view, the level of civilization south of the Sahara Desert was not even as advanced as that of the Native Americans in America.

So Wang Hailong said, ”There’s no need to be overly worried about that; East Africa is still different from Western countries in certain respects. At least from what I understand, East Africa is quite distinct from many Western nations.”

”Apart from having an economic development model very different from that of Europe and America, East Africa lags far behind Europe and America in many industrial fields. Take this concept of electrification I just mentioned: it seems that only East Africa has such a grand, nation-level strategy, and they already started laying it out back in the 1870s.”

”At that time, East Africa’s level of science and technology was far inferior to that of the European and American countries. But precisely because of the advantages of its economic system, East Africa later overtook them and even became a leader in certain fields.”

”Power and internal combustion engines are the two most typical cases. East Africa’s power development originated in Germany, but although Germany is still a leading player in this area today, it has inevitably been left behind by East Africa.”

Strictly speaking, East Africa’s power technology should be said to originate from the Heixinggen Consortium. The Heixinggen Consortium was one of the earliest capital groups to invest in the electricity sector and made an important contribution to East Africa’s early power construction. Of course, Wang Hailong wasn’t very familiar with this part.

”The reason East Africa has been able to surpass Germany is clearly that the advantages of East Africa’s economic system have played a huge role. According to the East African Government’s own propaganda, the key is ’pooling the strength of the whole nation to accomplish great things.’ Through full government support and unified coordination of resource allocation, East Africa’s power industry scale expanded rapidly and ultimately achieved a breakthrough from point to surface, driving the development of other domestic industries.”

Commander Zhang said, ”What a fine phrase—’pooling the strength of the whole nation to accomplish great things.’ This is the true essence of East Africa’s economic development. After all, East Africa has risen in just a few short decades to become a powerful industrial nation; clearly, there is real substance behind this.”

In the eyes of many countries, the powerful industrial nation—East Africa—actually does not acknowledge such a label. For according to the East African Government’s own positioning of its industry, East Africa is merely a semi-industrialized country.

East Africa’s standard for industrialization, under the influence of Ernst, has always been based on some of its own industrial indicators, of which the most important is the urbanization rate. At present, East Africa’s urbanization rate clearly falls short of the East African Government’s expectations; the urbanization rate for all of East Africa is only 33.6 percent.

This is the statistical figure for East Africa’s urbanization rate in 1914. Now, after all, it is already the end of 1915, and the Third Five-Year Plan in East Africa is nearing its end, so the East African Government has already begun collecting some key domestic data.

During the Third Five-Year Plan, East Africa’s urbanization rate grew significantly, even surpassing the growth rate of the previous two Five-Year Plans. However, it is undeniable that, compared with other industrial powers, East Africa’s urbanization rate is still on the low side—around 30 percent—only higher than that of Russia, Spain, and Japan, these three great powers.

In other words, East Africa’s current urbanization rate ranks in the middle among the great powers. The two countries with the highest urbanization rates, Britain and Germany, have left East Africa far behind; even the United States and France are about a dozen percentage points higher than East Africa.