African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1226: Chapter 235: Results of the 35 Plan

When Black slaves from East Africa flooded into the West African region, embracing freedom and the civilized world, the East African Government did not actually pay much attention to this trivial matter.

After all, among the 800,000 Black people, a large part of them were the elderly, weak, sick, and disabled, which had obviously become a burden rather than a wealth, so sending this group of Black people away was in line with the East African Government’s wishes.

As for East Africa’s unscrupulous act of driving more than 800,000 Black people into the British and French colonies, the East African Government did not care at all. It could be said that Upper Volta and the Gold Coast were essentially in a state of neglect by France and the United Kingdom, with those two countries not having the ability to care about the life and death of the West African colonies.

Of course, the influx of 800,000 Black people would not pose a threat to the rule of the colonies of those two countries. The real headache should be for the protectorates and vassal forces of the colonies.

It is imaginable that this sudden influx of 800,000 Black people would inevitably stir up a storm in Upper Volta and the Gold Coast.

After all, in the more than twenty years of exploitation and oppression in East Africa, these Black slaves had already forgotten the skills of surviving in the wild, and the rations distributed to them by East Africa could at most last for two or three days. After three days, facing a shortage of food, the Black people only had two paths to choose from: either seek refuge with local Black people or colonial powers, or directly resort to robbery.

And the colonial governments of England and France could only choose to watch helplessly, as the food supply for more than 800,000 Black people was beyond their capability to resolve. Even attempting physical elimination was not feasible.

Take for instance the French Upper Volta colony, where all the French people added together would only amount to a few hundred people. Even with hot weapons, facing the sudden appearance of hundreds of thousands of Black people, they would only be at a loss.

So the East African Government could already fully imagine the chaos that would ensue in the Gold Coast and Upper Volta in a certain period of the future.

Compared to the minor issue of releasing more than 800,000 Black people, the East African Government was truly concerned with its own Four-Five Plan, the adjustment and implementation of the new economic policy.

In 1915, East Africa’s Three-Five Plan officially ended, and in the past year, East Africa’s economy achieved brilliant success.

More optimistic than expected, at the end of 1915, East Africa officially resolved its debt issues with the Allies.

Due to the increasing blockade by England and France, the Allies placed huge orders with East Africa again at the end of 1915, and the completion of these orders directly turned East Africa from a debtor nation of Germany and Austria-Hungary into a creditor nation.

In the last century, Germany and Austria were long-term stable holders of the first and second creditor nation spots of East Africa, until surpassed by France at the beginning of this century.

And before World War I broke out, East Africa’s four main creditor nations, sorted by total debt, were France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, in that order.

Germany and Austria-Hungary ranked third and fourth respectively, but now East Africa achieved for the first time a reversal of debt with Germany and Austria-Hungary, albeit the complete repayment of debts to England and France still required some time.

Last year alone, in December, East Africa exported nearly 200,000 tons of steel products to Germany and Austria-Hungary, with the total volume of steel exports to the Allies reaching 470,000 tons.

This is an impressive number, especially considering that the Allies basically did not lack coal and iron mines. In fact, within the four countries of the Allies, Germany’s coal and steel could fully self-sustain, and while Austria-Hungary’s capacity was not as robust as Germany’s, it was enough to handle the Eastern Front. Although Bulgaria’s territory was relatively small, coal and iron mines were also distributed there, and there wasn’t much need to elaborate further about the Ottoman Empire.

The main reason East Africa was able to export so much steel to the Allies was still a matter of time.

Although the Allies were not lacking resources, and workers were barely sufficient, steel production required time, especially given the significant demand for specialty steels in Germany’s and Austria-Hungary’s military industries.

Therefore, procuring steel products from East Africa not only saved time but also allowed for more industrial workers to be allocated to other production industries or simply support the frontline battlefields.

At the beginning of the war, Germany and Austria-Hungary tended to procure raw materials from East Africa, but as the war transitioned into a stalemate, the two countries began to emulate Russia by directly procuring finished and semi-finished products from East Africa.

Meanwhile, the Basra Railway opened at the end of last year, further guaranteeing the smoothness of the trade route between East Africa and the Allies.

In 1915, East Africa produced 36 million tons of steel, exporting nearly four million tons, of which over two million tons were exported to European countries, especially France and Italy, which accounted for the bulk, while the rest was sold to countries and regions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Other industrial products, such as automobiles, electrical equipment, rubber, weapons, medical equipment, etc., all reached historical highs in exports, with East Africa’s economy thriving unprecedentedly.

In terms of transportation construction, by the end of 1915, East Africa’s total railway mileage officially exceeded 260,000 kilometers, further narrowing the gap with Europe and America, and by the completion of the Four-Five Plan, East Africa’s railway would inevitably surpass 300,000 kilometers.

East Africa’s achievements in highway construction were also significant, especially in terms of asphalt roads. After extensive development of asphalt resources in areas like Venezuela, East African cities and some main roads quickly completed their upgrades.

The nationwide canal plan in East Africa was also 80% complete, at the cost of millions of Black people buried in East Africa; each kilometer of canal could be said to be piled up with the flesh and blood of Black slaves.

In the area of maritime shipping, during the Three-Five Plan period, East Africa built and renovated nearly twenty modern container ports, and the total tonnage of East African merchant ships rose to over 6.1 million tons.

As for the civil aviation industry, during the Three-Five Plan, East Africa opened three civil aviation routes and built five large civil aviation airports. The East African civil aviation industry officially took off, and there is no doubt that civil aviation will play an important role in East Africa’s future transportation construction.

Although East Africa had made brilliant achievements in railway and highway construction over the years, some areas of East Africa were destined to be difficult to reach by land transportation.

For example, the Southwest region of East Africa, formerly known as Namibia and Botswana, consists of some vast desert and mountainous terrains where railways and highways are extremely sparse, and the area is tremendously vast.

And aircraft is evidently a very suitable form of transportation for the Southwest region, which also holds significant importance for East African national defense.

In the southern land frontier of East Africa, reaching along the banks of the Orange River, the southwesternmost city of East Africa, Orange Monde, is nearly isolated from the outside world, with its material supply and communication almost entirely dependent on maritime shipping.

Although East Africa has plans to build a highway along the Orange River to connect it with the eastern Apington, it remains only at the design stage.

From Apington to Orange Monde, hundreds of kilometers of area is virtually a no man’s land, with only a few border outposts set up by East Africa, and land transportation relies entirely on two legs. Building a highway here is not easy in the slightest, and most importantly, it is difficult to recover costs. Therefore, since the project was proposed in the last century, it has been delayed and not started.

However, aircraft are different. With aircraft, the future from Orange Monde to the East African inland will become relatively accessible and not entirely dependent on maritime shipping. Moreover, the population of Orange Monde itself is not large, and building an airport could greatly satisfy the travel needs of local residents.

During the Three-Five Plan period, the achievements in East Africa’s transportation construction were still very ideal, and these transportation constructions contributed significantly to East Africa’s economic growth.

Besides its outstanding performance in economy and transportation, East Africa’s national defense also achieved great progress. In 1915, the scale of East Africa’s standing army first surpassed 600,000, reaching as many as 630,000.

This was mainly due to East Africa suddenly acquiring a large number of colonies and the rapid expansion of the navy. Throughout 1915, East Africa used its army extensively in colonies, including East Kalimantan, Mindanao Island, Gabon, Cameroon, Togoland, and numerous other colonies, to conduct large-scale suppression and crackdown on local resistance forces, with East Africa’s colonial garrison numbering in the tens of thousands.

As for the navy, needless to say, with the increase in the number of warships, the East African Navy’s personnel also ballooned in a short time to ensure the security of East African trade.