African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1475 Steel
The urbanization rate in East Africa in 1929 corresponded to the rapid development of East African cities, among which fourteen cities had urban populations exceeding one million and one city had a population exceeding two million.

The first city in East Africa to have a population exceeding two million is Mombasa. With the construction of the financial market and the influx of capital from the Indian Ocean coast, Mombasa's development has entered the fast lane in recent years, officially surpassing Dar es Salaam and taking the throne of the largest city in East Africa.

Among the newly-added cities with over one million population, the ones that deserve more attention are Rhineland, Kampala, Tete and Maputo.

Dong Yu, director of the Statistics Bureau, said: "Rhine City is the capital of the empire and one of the two core transportation hubs in central East Africa. With its advantages in administrative, technological, financial, educational and medical public resources, it is not surprising that it has risen strongly. In recent years, the tertiary industry in East Africa has developed relatively rapidly, and Rhine City is one of the more typical representative cities."

"In contrast, New Frankfurt took on the main secondary industry and logistics and transportation pressures. In 1929, the population of New Frankfurt also reached 167 million. The combined population of Rhine City and New Frankfurt is close to three million. If Kabwe is included, the population is over three million."

Compared with most national capitals of the same period, Rhine City is quite special. The most prominent point is that there are relatively few industries in Rhine City.

London in the UK, Paris in France, Berlin in Germany, Moscow in the Soviet Union, etc., all have a large number of industries. Even the industries in the capitals of these countries are stronger than the national industries of many backward small countries.

The capital of East Africa has divided its industrial and transportation functions between New Frankfurt and Kabwe, so Dong Yu, director of the Statistics Bureau, discussed these three cities together.

Of course, there are similar cases in capitals or capital cities like Rhine City, such as Washington in the United States and Canberra in Australia. Their industries are not the strongest in their own countries or regions.

However, the reasons for the formation of these two cities are very different from those of Rhine City. Rhine City was actively promoted by the East African government, while Washington and Canberra were the result of political compromise.

Washington became the capital of the United States because of the need to heal the wounds between the North and the South after the Civil War, while Canberra was chosen because the two Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne were not convinced by each other.

Friedrich said: "Rhine City and New Frankfurt City have indeed developed rapidly in recent years, which is also due to the need for national political stability. Other towns in the Central Province, such as Kitwe, have also made good transformation in recent years."

As the center of the empire, the Rhine City's economic and industrial strength should not be too weak, but it does not want to take on too much industry. Therefore, the purpose of building the new Frankfurt city is to take these two points into consideration.

Dong Yu went on to say: "In addition to the city of Rhine, the rapid development of the cities of Maputo and Kampala is closely related to national policies, corresponding to the country's strong support for the Great Lakes region and the southern region in recent years, thereby coordinating and balancing the balanced development among the country's regions."

"These two cities are representatives of the Great Lakes region and the southern region. In addition, the economic growth rates of cities such as Mwanza, Kisumu, Otto, Bloemfontein and New Hamburg are also higher than the national average."

During East Africa’s fifth and sixth five-year plans, the Great Lakes region and the southern provinces were key development areas at the national level, and the industrialization of these regions has been the main driving force behind urbanization in East Africa in the past decade.

"The last one is Tete. Tete is now the center of the imperial steel industry. Its advantages are rich coal and steel resources, as well as the shipping advantage of the Zambezi River. This shipping advantage is something that other steel industry centers in East Africa did not have in the past."

"In this way, even if Tete's coal and iron ore resources are exhausted in the future, it will still be able to import resources from overseas to stabilize its position."

“Not to mention that Tete is located at the junction of the industrial zones of Bohemia and Malawi, which is more conducive to the gathering of its resources.”

In addition to these advantages, Tete has national defense advantages because it is located inland. During wartime, coastal areas are easy targets. Tete can use the Zambezi River to develop shipping, which is safer than coastal cities. In addition, it has its own land transportation and the overlapping advantages of mineral resources. It can be said to be the most ideal steel industry base.

In 1929, the distribution of cities with a population of over one million in East Africa was relatively balanced. Except for the northern region and the southwest, all other regions had cities with a population of over one million.

In addition to large cities with a population of over one million, the development of small and medium-sized towns is also remarkable, such as Kinshasa, Benguela, Chende, Soyo, etc.

In terms of industrial and population distribution, the eastern region still has the main advantage, the gap between the central, western and eastern regions is getting smaller and smaller, and the Great Lakes region and southern provinces are developing rapidly.

Although the northern region is lackluster, it does not mean that there is no progress in the north. With the establishment of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, opportunities in the northern region began to increase. In particular, with the development of the economies of Abyssinia, the Kingdom of South Germany and other countries, their markets also grew accordingly.

Once the population and economic size of the South German Kingdom reaches a certain level, the economic location conditions in northern East Africa will be greatly improved.

Because the Kingdom of South Germany itself has a land area of ​​nearly two million square kilometers, it has the foundation to become a great power, but its population is too small. However, it will take at most the next 20 to 30 years for the population of the Kingdom of South Germany to exceed 10 million.

……

As time goes by, other statistics on East Africa are gradually coming out.

"In 1928, the Empire's steel production reached a staggering million tons, an increase of nearly million tons over ten years ago, and more than million tons more than the United States. Judging from the United States' steel production in recent years, their steel production last year should be more than million tons."

"Although the Empire is still the world's largest steel producer, our growth rate in steel production in recent years is not as good as that of the United States."

"One of the important factors is that after 1920, the empire has been adjusting its steel industry, especially state-owned steel enterprises, eliminating a large number of obsolete production capacity."

"In recent years, a large part of the growth in the steel industry has come from private steel companies, which are mainly concentrated in coastal areas."

Friedrich listened to the report from the Ministry of Industry and gained a general understanding of the current development of the steel industry in East Africa.

In the past decade, most of the 20 million tons of additional steel production in East Africa came from foreign capital and private investment in East Africa, while the main force of East Africa's steel industry, that is, those large state-owned steel companies, have been updating equipment and limiting the blind expansion of production capacity.

Although the output of state-owned steel companies has not changed much, they still account for the majority of East Africa's steel production, and have become more streamlined through "slimming down" in recent years.

Correspondingly, the economy as a whole has been overheated in the past decade, and the demand for steel in the East African market has also increased rapidly, but the production of state-owned enterprises cannot keep up, which naturally led to foreign capital and private capital automatically filling the gap in the market. However, the most outstanding development of world steel production is still the United States, and the steel production of the United States has caught up with the steel production of the United States in the same period of the previous life, which is more than 50 million tons.

You know, in this time and space, the United States has two powerful industrial rivals, East Africa and Germany. Needless to say, East Africa is an emerging economy, and the German industry is also not to be underestimated. It recovered quickly after the war and was not restricted by the treaties of the defeated countries in the previous life.

Therefore, the fact that the American steel industry has been able to reach the same level as in the same period in the previous life under the competition from two equally strong rivals in East Africa and Germany obviously explains to a certain extent how "hot" the American market is today.

This is especially obvious when compared with East Africa. As the world's largest industrial country, East Africa also has a larger market size than the United States. After all, East Africa has a population of nearly 200 million, while the United States has only more than 120 million.

That is to say, without considering overseas markets, East Africa naturally has a market with nearly 80 million more people than the United States, but the United States' steel production is only about 10 million less than East Africa.

Even in overseas markets, the gap between the United States and East Africa cannot be too large. Therefore, the steel production of the United States is obviously unreasonable and has far exceeded its corresponding market size.

This means that the bubble in the US economy has reached an alarming level.

In the East African steel market, the East African government was still able to intervene, while the United States basically allowed the market to grow wildly. But now that the United States is "in its heyday", the Roaring Twenties, most Americans have completely lost their rationality.

With the exception of East Africa and the United States, two countries that cannot be extrapolated with common sense, German steel has developed rapidly in the past decade.

In a very short time after the war, Germany's industry fully recovered, because Germany itself was not hit hard during World War I and its original industrial facilities were preserved intact.

After the war, other parts of Europe were rebuilt, especially the areas around Germany, which were the former main war zones, and the demand for steel was very strong, which allowed German steel companies to make a good living after the war.

Up to now, Germany's annual steel production has exceeded 20 million tons, while Germany's steel production only reached this level before World War II.

Judging from the development of the steel industry, Germany today is far more powerful than it was at the same time in the past, especially in the industrial field. Germany has become the de facto leader in Europe. In contrast, the industrial development of Britain and France has been relatively slow.

Especially in the UK, the steel industry has not only failed to make progress in the past decade, but has shown an overall downward trend. Not only has the technology become outdated, but the output has also been decreasing.

In other words, Britain still has a huge colony to support it, otherwise, the British steel industry is likely to suffer a "great collapse".

However, precisely because Germany was too powerful, other countries became increasingly wary of Germany. Some countries even secretly contacted the Soviet Union to support the Soviet Union in curbing Germany's development.

As for why East Africa and the United States do not receive such treatment, it is because East Africa and the United States have already become completely powerful and there is no possibility of being contained.

Germany is different. Although its industrial and military strength is strong, it does not have an overwhelming advantage over its neighboring countries. This gives other countries a lot of room to maneuver in dealing with Germany.

The best target among them was the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was huge in size, but its industrial and military capabilities were far inferior to Germany.

In the past, because of Germany's defeat in the war, it cooperated with the Soviet Union, which enabled the Soviet Union's military and industry to make great progress, such as the two countries jointly developing weapons.

In this time and space, the Soviet Union lost this opportunity and was instead strictly guarded by Germany. This obviously greatly restricted the Soviet Union's access to military and industrial technology, coupled with the poor record of Tsarist Russia and the previous Soviet Union against Germany.

This made the entire international community pessimistic about the Soviet Union. Assuming a war broke out between the two countries, most people believed that Germany would inevitably win.

Such a "poor and weak" Soviet Union obviously needed a certain amount of support in order to meet the needs of some countries to balance Germany, including Britain, France, and even extraterritorial countries such as the United States and East Africa.

France's anti-German intentions are open, and Britain has new and old grudges against Germany. As for the United States and East Africa, they also do not want the emergence of a superpower that can dominate Europe.

Therefore, the Soviet Union became the "chosen" country, which also led to the fact that many countries currently have very delicate relations with the Soviet Union.

On the one hand, they hated the Soviet Union, but on the other hand, they needed the Soviet Union to maintain the balance in Europe. Therefore, many countries had very contradictory attitudes towards the Soviet Union.

Perhaps only the three great powers, Germany, Austria and Japan, were the most resolute in their attitude towards dismembering and strangling the Soviet Union. They had direct territorial conflicts, ideological conflicts, conflicts of interest, etc. with the Soviet Union.

Both Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire attached great importance to the Eastern European market, and the Soviet Union also wanted to expand westward. The relationship between them was one of life and death, while the conflict between Japan and the Soviet Union was in the Far East.

This is the attitude of the great powers towards the Soviet Union, not between the great powers and the Soviet Union. The Ottoman Empire obviously had a big conflict with the Soviet Union. As for the Far Eastern Empire, there were also territorial disputes with the Soviet Union. It’s just that these countries were too weak, so even if they had conflicts with the Soviet Union, it would not play a big role.

East Africa's attitude towards the Soviet Union is very ambiguous. At this stage, the existence of the Soviet Union is more beneficial than harmful to East Africa. East Africa can accelerate its entry into the Middle East, Central Asia and other regions under the banner of anti-Sovietism and expand its sphere of influence.

At the same time, the power gap between the Soviet Union and East Africa was too large, so East Africa was not too worried about the Soviet Union. The only threat the Soviet Union could pose to East Africa was ideological weapons, but East Africa also had ways to counter the Soviet Union. The people of East Africa had experienced the planned economy era, so they were less likely to be bewitched. At the same time, the East African "Labor Party" could also buffer the Soviet Union's ideological weapons.

Finally, there is the Tsarist Russian government-in-exile in East Africa. Although the Soviet regime is now stable, it can still be used to disgust the Soviets. Moreover, the internal struggles in the Soviet Union are serious, which means that there are always people who are dissatisfied with the Soviet government, and there are always some among these people who can be "pacified" by the imperialist countries.

In fact, it has been nearly ten years since the Soviet Labor Party came to power, and the "fear" of the Soviet Union in various countries has weakened to a certain extent over time. At least in recent years, the Soviet Union has failed twice in its foreign exports, namely the two failures in Hungary and the Far Eastern Empire.

(End of this chapter)