African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1360: Both epidemic prevention and economy are important

Rhine City.

After being hit by the plague, the East African government quickly launched relevant actions. Starting from January, East Africa has conducted strict inspections on European and American ships. After February, it expanded to all countries in the world.

Because the East African government is currently not clear which countries are not affected by the plague.

"There are currently 1,372 cases reported nationwide, of which several port cities in the west account for more than 60%, and a large number of suspected cases have also appeared in the east."

"European countries have declared emergencies one after another. North American countries have become the world's second largest epidemic area due to frequent trade and exchanges with Europe. The plague is spreading to the whole world along the sea route."

The data provided by the East African Ministry of Health is shocking. You must know that despite East Africa's strict prevention and control, the number of infected people in East Africa exceeds one thousand, and those countries that have not made relevant preparations have to at least multiply that by ten. There is no need to say more about Europe and North America. It is estimated that the governments of Europe and the United States simply cannot keep up with the statistics.

And this is just the data obtained by the East African Ministry of Health. Who knows how many infected people there are in East Africa? After all, the European flu can easily be confused with other flus. Coupled with the underreported data, the situation is obviously not too optimistic.

Ernst said: "We obviously cannot relax about the epidemic. We must at least be prepared to survive the most difficult year."

Most plagues appear to be extremely powerful at the beginning or in the middle stages of an outbreak, but Ernst judged that this epidemic might last for two to three years, and over time, the plague should die out naturally.

This was the case with the Spanish flu in the previous life. The only thing the East African government can do is to try to get through the most serious stage of the epidemic and minimize the losses. There is no other way.

After all, although technology was so advanced in the past, there was no better way to deal with the plague. Ernst did not believe that the current level of technology and medical care in East Africa could tame the European flu.

Ernst then said, "Starting today, martial law will be imposed on the capital. People entering Rhine City will be strictly monitored and examined. Unless necessary, it is best not to go to Rhine City."

No matter what, Ernst has to consider his own safety first. Now the city of Rhine is still safe and there are no related cases.

After all, Rhine City is located inland, and the epidemic mainly comes from coastal areas. Even if it wants to spread to Rhine City, it will take time.

Minister of Civil Affairs Volnitz asked: "Your Majesty, are we going to directly cut off the connection between Rhine City and the outside world?"

Ernst said, "Cut off? Don't let your imagination run wild. As the capital, Rhine City cannot possibly cut off its connection with the outside world. Just to feed and drink hundreds of thousands of people, don't they need people?"

"It is also impossible to stop local officials from reporting to the Rhine City."

"Therefore, it is impossible to force this through administrative orders, but rather to 'promote' this concept and strengthen disinfection and inspection work at the same time."

If it were ten years ago, there might not be much problem for the East African government to do this. After all, at that time, East Africa was a typical administrative planning and directive country, and the public acceptance was high.

Now that East Africa has liberalized the free market, it is obviously not easy to get the people to obey the government's orders.

Of course, if he pushed it hard, he could do it, but Ernst didn't want to cause public outrage.

"Times have changed, and the country's economic system has changed, so we can no longer fight this epidemic with the same methods we used before," Ernst said.

"At this stage, the way to fight the plague in East Africa should be to implement relevant epidemic prevention policies as much as possible on the basis of maintaining normal social production and operation."

Of course, if this is done, the effectiveness of East Africa's epidemic prevention will obviously be greatly reduced. However, Ernst is very clear that even if East Africa really implements comprehensive epidemic control and takes the safety of people's lives as the first goal, it will be a completely thankless task.

Instead of being grateful to the government for ensuring the safety of most people's lives, the people of East Africa will be dissatisfied with the government's actions because of the constraints of the government's policies.

Even if East Africa really imposes nationwide martial law, it will be impossible to keep the epidemic out, so Ernst’s proposition is to give equal importance to people’s life safety and the economy.

Ernst said: "We have done what the government should do, at least to make people believe that we have done our best. After all, they don't want to be locked up in the house."

As an absolute monarch, Ernst himself had no moral bottom line, otherwise this country in East Africa would not have existed.

"We can also take advantage of this period to promote economic policies and promote domestic economic transformation. On the one hand, we can stimulate and promote the upgrading of enterprises, and on the other hand, we can improve the quality of the service industry and improve the domestic economic circulation system."

The East African economy had already faced major challenges due to the end of World War I. At this time, it was a good opportunity to use the European influenza pandemic to promote economic transformation.

The current problems facing the East African economy are mainly in two aspects. The first is the poor economic quality. Although East Africa is already the world's largest industrial country, compared with European and American countries, East African industries are still dominated by medium and low-end industries.

The second is that after the end of World War II, European orders dropped significantly, which had a huge impact on East Africa's current industrial structure.

There are only two ways to deal with this impact: either expand overseas markets or increase the consumption capacity of domestic people.

However, expanding overseas markets is obviously not feasible at this stage. With the end of World War I and the return of world order to stability, East Africa has lost the excellent external environment for expanding overseas markets and instead has to face a new round of challenges from European and American countries.

Of course, it will take at least several years for European countries to restore economic production. At present, East Africa’s main competitor is still the United States.

However, the United States alone is enough to cause headaches for East Africa. After all, the industrial capacity of the United States is not much inferior to that of East Africa.

Previously, due to the war in Europe, the domestic industrial production capacity of the United States had been stretched to the limit, so the economic threat posed by the United States to East Africa was enormous.

Of course, East Africa is not unprepared to cope with the competition from American industry. After all, since the late 1940s and 1950s, East Africa has begun to emphasize economic transformation in order to avoid competition from the United States.

The industry of the United States is actually at the same level as that of East Africa, while European countries, which have more mid- to high-end industries, have not yet recovered.

Therefore, East Africa's goal is to seize more mid- to high-end industries, and at this time, the technical reserves and machinery obtained from the allies, as well as Russia's high-end talents, can play a role. However, industrial transformation is only a temporary solution for East Africa, because the world market is always limited, East Africa's industrial brand effect is obviously not comparable to that of Europe, and mid- to high-end industries also need time to cultivate.

The industrial brands in East Africa with relatively poor performance are mainly light industrial products, which have the largest gap with other countries in terms of food, clothing, housing and transportation.

After all, although houses, cars and other means of transportation are valuable, houses are basically difficult to export, and cars and other means of transportation are not necessities.

The textile industry and the food industry are completely different. They are updated quickly and are necessities for people's lives, especially food. It can be said that food is the most basic industry.

People have to pay for food every day, and they have to buy more after they finish eating. The circulation effect is the best. Owning a strong food company is equivalent to owning an inexhaustible gold mine. The spread of cola, hamburgers, and fried chicken in the United States around the world in the past is a typical example.

In summary, an important part of East Africa’s fifth five-year plan or plan is to improve the quality of development in the light industry sector.

Ernst said: "Light industry has always been our biggest shortcoming, especially compared with European and American countries. Even if we produce more products, if consumers don't buy them, it will be ineffective production and a waste of resources."

"In the textile industry, East Africa's production capacity has indeed caught up with that of European and American countries. However, when people abroad mention East African textile products, their first impression is that they are of poor quality and cheap. Our existing textile companies have not grown into high-quality companies that are well-known internationally."

The normal export volume of textile products from East Africa is not much, but the abnormal thing is that during the war, a large number of orders from Europe played a huge role in stimulating the development of the textile industry in East Africa. However, now the war is over.

As a result, the East African textile industry faces new challenges while also having to deal with competition from American textile companies.

However, East Africa's textile industry obviously still has many shortcomings compared with the textile industry of old powers such as the United States.

Ernst said: "The domestic textile enterprises have a short development time, poor technical accumulation, relatively backward equipment, and even worse product quality, which seriously affects the reputation and reputation of the empire's export consumer goods."

In fact, to a certain extent, this is also affected by East Africa's long-term completely planned economy in the past. Although the textile industry in East Africa has now become privately owned, their technology sources, machinery and equipment, and management models are inevitably affected by the past East African economic system.

Of course, things cannot be viewed in this way. We must know that in the last century, East Africa was still an agricultural country. Before the fifth five-year plan, it had just transformed from a semi-industrial country into a primary industrial power.

From this point of view, although a large number of state-owned textile enterprises in East Africa have withdrawn from the stage of history, their contributions are indelible.

Today, East Africa's textile industry has a large number of professional workers, which is the historical contribution of East Africa's state-owned economy.

Although state-owned enterprises were not efficient, they expanded rapidly in a short period of time based on administrative orders and plans, fostered a huge industrial scale, and in turn trained a large number of professional workers and technicians.

If it were not for this, the East African textile industry would not have been able to directly find a large number of experienced workers to develop after 1910, even if it was a private enterprise.

Of course, now that these state-owned assets have been sold, it is impossible for the East African government to set up a new batch of state-owned textile enterprises. At least as far as the textile industry is concerned, the efficiency and market sensitivity of the private sector are higher than those of the East African government.

However, Ernst will obviously not let East Africa's current textile industry go its own way for this reason, especially when facing competition from European and American countries and even other regions.

Ernst said: "During the fifth five-year plan, the focus of the national economy is to guide the transformation of the national economy, complete the renewal of equipment, technology and even management mode, improve production efficiency and reduce production costs, so as to cope with the competition of foreign enterprises."

"The government should introduce relevant policies to encourage companies to eliminate obsolete equipment and encourage technological research and innovation."

"If our companies want to survive, they can only crush similar companies in Europe and the United States. Compared with companies in other countries, we lose in technology and production efficiency."

"Take the textile industry as an example. Our textile industry has no shortage of raw materials, but our technology and publicity are inferior to those of Europe and the United States, which makes it difficult for us to compete with other countries."

East Africa is a major producer of cotton, raw silk, wool and various types of linen, which is the main reason why Ernst said East African textile companies do not lack raw materials.

Obviously, sufficient raw materials at relatively low prices are very important for textile companies. After all, a good cook cannot cook without rice. A country that does not even have basic textile development materials such as cotton basically has no way to develop the textile industry.

Among European and American countries, those with developed textile industries can either grow and produce on their own like the United States, or obtain large quantities from colonies like Britain and France. Otherwise, they can only learn from Germany and meet their domestic needs through imports.

When Germany imports raw materials such as cotton, not only is the price easily manipulated by other countries, there is also the risk of supply being cut off, which was already reflected in World War I.

An important reason why German textile companies can develop rapidly is their advanced textile technology research and development and application, which reduces costs through large-scale industrial production and improves the quality of finished products. This is also what East Africa is currently pursuing.

For countries that do not meet all of the above conditions, it is very difficult to develop the textile industry. A typical example is the Soviet Union in the past. The Soviet Union lacked natural cotton-growing areas, so it had to spend a lot of money to intercept rivers in Central Asia and create a lot of cotton-growing areas in the desert.

If this was not done, the Western society's ban on cotton exports to the Soviet Union alone would be enough to cause the Soviet textile industry to explode.

It is obvious that a country with a system like the Soviet Union is a thorn in the eyes of imperialist countries such as Britain, France, Germany, Austria, the United States and Eastern Europe, so the possibility of not imposing sanctions on it is almost zero.

From this point of view, East Africa is blessed with a large number of planting and production areas for natural cotton and other raw materials.

Moreover, East Africa's cotton producing areas are very evenly distributed from north to south, which makes East Africa's cotton strategic security very solid.

The raw materials are abundant and relatively cheap. Although not as cheap as the cotton grown in Britain's colonies, especially in India, which relies on low labor costs, this also makes the basic price of East African cotton still competitive internationally. Before World War I, Germany imported large amounts of cotton from East Africa, which is a typical example.

Therefore, in terms of raw material variety, quality and price, East African cotton's comprehensive conditions are second only to those of the United Kingdom, which is a natural advantage for East African textile companies.

However, if East African textile enterprises want to make good use of this basic advantage, they must adopt better technology, equipment and management models.

(End of this chapter)