African Entrepreneurship Record

At present, the shipbuilding industry in East Africa has reached a considerable scale. It has become a major shipbuilding country in the world in terms of the number of ships manufactured each year.

With the implementation of the Second Five-Year Plan, by 1908, the total tonnage of East African civilian ships had exceeded more than two million tons, close to three million tons, accounting for about 7% of the world's civilian shipbuilding industry.

At that time, the total tonnage of German civilian ships was about three million tons, and the gap between East Africa and Germany was not large. Of course, Britain was even more terrifying. Its total tonnage of civilian ships accounted for more than 50% of the world, close to 20 million tons, and the proportion was even higher in the 1990s. Even with the development of the shipbuilding industry in various countries, the share of Britain has declined, but it is still far ahead of other countries.

Britain firmly holds the top spot in the world's shipbuilding industry. In addition to domestic demand, most orders from other countries are almost given to Britain, including East Africa and Germany. Due to manufacturing costs and technical factors, East Africa and Germany will also order ships from Britain.

Of course, East Africa has a long history of buying or leasing ships from abroad, especially in the past, when sailing ships had not yet completely withdrawn from the stage of history. In order to meet the needs of immigration and cargo transportation in the country, East Africa even bought ships from small countries such as Italy, the Netherlands, and Greece.

As time goes by, East Africa's domestic shipbuilding industry has developed by leaps and bounds, especially after the Second Five-Year Plan, most of East Africa's needs can basically be met by domestic shipbuilding companies.

Moreover, the peak period of East African shipbuilding construction has basically bid farewell to the sail era. At present, most of East African shipbuilding industries are at an upper-middle level, and in the military shipbuilding industry, East Africa actually has no obvious technological gap with other powers.

Through two five-year plans, East African port cities have been basically fully developed, especially in the coastal areas of the former Angola and Mozambique. The shipbuilding industry in East Africa has expanded nearly three times compared with 1900.

Emerging coastal cities such as Cabinda, Luanda, Benguela, Beira, Quelimane, Maputo, etc. have developed rapidly, and the number of important port cities in East Africa has also increased from more than 20 in the 1990s to nearly 40.

The rise of these cities has played a huge role in promoting the development of East Africa's shipbuilding industry and promoted East Africa's status as a maritime power.

This has also made the east and west coasts of East Africa appear quite prosperous and spectacular. After the Suez Canal replaced the Cape of Good Hope, business on the African coast has prospered again.

Before the opening of the Suez Canal, most ships had to detour around the Cape of Good Hope. After the opening of the Suez Canal, shipping on the east and west coasts of Africa actually experienced a long decline. It was not until the 1980s, after the rise of East Africa, that the east coast trade initially resumed its prosperity.

After the South African War, East Africa became a veritable two-ocean country. In addition to East Africa's development of the American, Western European and West African markets, commercial trade on the west coast has become active again.

Because of the existence of East Africa, the east and west coast routes of Africa have once again become the world's main commercial routes. Before the opening of the Suez Canal, although there were many ships passing through, Africa was basically undeveloped except for a small number of coastal areas at that time, so the goods that Africa could trade were only a few specialties such as slaves and ivory.

The development of East Africa has directly promoted the prosperity of various commodity trades on both sides of the East African coast, which has also made it the first time that a country in sub-Saharan Africa has exported industrial products.

In short, the East African shipbuilding industry has a good development foundation. The demand of East Africa itself has greatly promoted the rapid development of the East African shipbuilding industry in recent years.

Ernst told government officials: "Emerging industries are not just industries that did not appear in the first industrial revolution, such as electricity, automobiles, petroleum, and chemicals, but also emerging industries that are different from general traditional industries because of major technological innovations, such as steel, railways, and shipbuilding."

"For example, today's steel industry is very different from the past. Although the product is still steel, the technology has undergone earth-shaking changes. In the past, the steel industry relied on coal, but now it focuses on iron ore, and the efficiency of coal utilization is more efficient. Various new steel production processes based on the Thomas steelmaking process make today's steel production very different from that during the first industrial revolution, allowing Germany and the United States to surpass Britain in the steel industry."

"So this type of emerging industry is different from our general emerging industries. On the surface, it is the same as traditional industries, but the internal changes have been turned upside down."

Everyone agrees with Ernst's words. Since the 1990s, East Africa's industry has accelerated, and everyone has witnessed it. Now the impact of emerging industries on the entire country has penetrated into all areas of East Africans' food, clothing, housing, and transportation.

To be frank, East Africa has surpassed Europe and America to some extent. The people of East Africa can enjoy many technological products that many other countries cannot, most notably home appliances and cars.

However, there is still a lot of room for growth in the industrial scale of East Africa, and there is still a gap with Europe and America in many fields, which makes East Africa's overall industry still inferior to Germany and the United States.

As for the UK, with the completion of the East Africa 25th Plan, East Africa is likely to have surpassed the UK in terms of industry.

After all, as early as five years ago, East Africa's steel production was almost on par with that of the United Kingdom. Steel production is the most intuitive data of industrial development in this era, so the level of industrial development of a country can be inferred to a certain extent through steel production. Today, East Africa's steel production is definitely higher than that of the United Kingdom.

Of course, there is still a big gap between East Africa and the United Kingdom in terms of per capita. Take per capita steel production as an example. In 1900, East Africa's steel production was about 3 million tons, and its population was more than twice that of the United Kingdom, while the British steel production was close to 5 million tons at that time.

And this 5 million tons of steel production does not include the steel production of British colonies. Therefore, before the First Five-Year Plan, the per capita steel possession in East Africa was significantly different from that in the United Kingdom. With the passage of time, this point must have been greatly improved, but the East African government thought that it would not be easy to surpass the United Kingdom.

Of course, when comparing national strength, especially with the industry of other countries, per capita does not mean much to the East African government. The industrial volume and available resources are what the East African government attaches more importance to.

As a large government country with vast national resources, the East African government believes that its domestic industry is second only to the United States and Germany. After all, the population and land area of ​​East Africa also require that East Africa cannot be too low. As for per capita data, it is mainly used in the field of people's livelihood, rather than competing with other countries. When the degree of industrialization in East Africa is higher, the per capita data will naturally increase.

Moreover, East Africa's domestic industrialization is almost dominated by the government, which also makes the East African government naturally pay more attention to the total industrial volume rather than per capita data. After all, in the eyes of many people, the industrialization development of East Africa is almost promoted by the government.

In short, as the Second Five-Year Plan draws to a close, the changes in East Africa are almost visible to the naked eye, especially in industrial construction.

The upgrading of emerging industries and traditional industries has brought unexpected results to the East African government. Because of the rise of emerging industries, the Second Five-Year Plan has exceeded the psychological expectations of the East African government. This is a detail that has been ignored by the East African government in the past.

During the First Five-Year Plan, although emerging industries were also vigorously developed and promoted, during the Second Five-Year Plan, with the further development of emerging industries, a more obvious thrust burst out, allowing East Africa to experience a more rapid development speed than during the First Five-Year Plan.