African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1349: Chapter 356: The World’s Third Most Populous Great Power (Double)

Very quickly, Ernst realized the issue and said to the National Bureau of Statistics Director, Langfult, ”The urban population in our country should not be limited to this! After all, our industrial capacity surpassed the United States several years ago, making us the world’s top industrial power.”

National Bureau of Statistics Director Langfult replied, ”Your Majesty’s doubts, we are actually very clear about, but this isn’t a mistake in our work; it is a normal phenomenon.”

”This time, we have only counted the preliminary data of urban households so we have arrived at the figure of thirty-four percent urban population ratio, but our country’s level of urbanization broke thirty percent many years ago.”

”In recent years, East Africa’s economic and industrial development has accelerated due to the impact of war, so the figure of thirty-four percent might seem somewhat unreasonable at first glance.”

”However, we cannot ignore the fact that the structure of the urban population in East Africa has already undergone transformation. In the Era of planned economy, our urban registered population basically matched the general urban population data.”

”But since 1910, after opening up policies and loosening restrictions, the value of residential registration in East Africa has dropped significantly.”

”Many non-urban registered people have poured into the cities; many of them did not become urban citizens, but instead retained rural registration, although these people are indeed living in the cities.”

”Therefore, the current permanent urban population in our country is certainly far higher than the thirty-four percent ratio. According to our estimates, if you include the permanently residing non-urban registered people, the proportion of urban residents nationwide might exceed forty percent.”

”However, exact data ultimately depends on the year-end final calculation, and the initial assessment is only suitable for rough reference.”

With Langfult’s explanation, Ernst and other senior officials of East Africa suddenly realized that this was the distinction between registered population and permanent population.

In his previous life, Ernst was deeply affected by this. In the former Far East Empire, many non-urban registered residents lived in cities. Just take the capital of the Far East Empire as an example, where the registered population was only over ten million, but calculating the permanent population could reach over twenty million. Adding some transient population would be even more exaggerated.

Therefore, the urban population in East Africa, if counted by permanent residency, would very likely exceed sixty million or even higher levels.

In this case, the permanent rural population of East Africa might not have reached more than one hundred million. Of course, this is a good thing for East Africa, as development today means that unless East African society stops progressing, rural population must inevitably decrease gradually.

Let’s just estimate that East Africa’s urbanization level is about forty percent; this is already a very good result for East Africa.

After all, the more populous a country is, the harder industrialization becomes, and to further support industrial development in East Africa, we can only take food from the mouth of old imperial powers.

The additional tens of millions of industrial workers in East Africa surely displaced many people’s livelihoods, as the growth rate of the global market is far slower than industrial capacity expansion, which is also the reason why from the mid-19th century onward, global economic crises concentrated, occurred violently, and happened frequently.

Of course, this also illustrates that from the 19th to early 20th century, it was a pivotal moment when countries could soar to great heights; grasping this opportunity could rapidly turn a nation into an industrial country and become one of the imperialist states.

In the mid-19th century alone, the rising industrial countries included Germany, Russia, the United States, East Africa, and Japan—five countries. This Era was truly a diversified era; exploiting the disputes among Great Powers could yield profits.

Under unipolar hegemony, the mobility of technology, knowledge, and talent is the worst, just like the stagnant world order seen in the 21st century in the previous life, where many countries, despite putting in enough effort, ultimately fell short before reaching victory, becoming the crop harvested by American hegemony.