African Entrepreneurship Records

Chapter 1014 Light Industry

As time goes by, the contradiction between Japan and Russia has become increasingly acute, and along with it, many domestic industrial projects in East Africa under the East Africa First Five-Year Plan have been completed and put into production.

The First Five-Year Plan is an important national policy that promotes the rapid growth of East Africa's industrialization in a short period of time. This also caused the output of East Africa's industrial products to enter a stage of further rapid growth starting in 1903.

"From 1901 to the present, the industrialization process in East Africa has continued to accelerate, and a large number of industrial products have been domestically produced. As long as these products are produced, they will inevitably face an unavoidable problem, that is, who should these products be sold to?"

“Since the 1990s, the country has begun to create a large national market. However, although it is feasible to rely solely on the domestic market to ensure industrial production in East Africa, it also has great negative effects, resulting in distribution conflicts. It’s impossible to eliminate.”

"So our country must rely on foreign markets to ease the instability of domestic supply and demand. Even in the early stages of industrialization, the rapid production of a large number of industrial products will lead to oversupply. However, through the export of foreign commodities, this can be alleviated to a certain extent. Alleviating inconsistencies in domestic distribution issues.”

The reason why the Soviet Union was able to flourish in its first two five-year plans was that, in addition to the excellent economic crisis situation in various countries at the time, the most important thing was that it created a huge consumer market through redistribution, which enabled the country's industrial development after the establishment of the Soviet industrial system. Able to achieve forward circulation.

East Africa is similar to the United States in that it created huge domestic market demand through colonial means. Originally, the immigrant group was a truly proletarian group. Not only did they have no material property, but they also had no jobs and income. However, after immigration, through plunder, , thereby obtaining the land of the indigenous people, and operating on this basis to create value.

Therefore, the large domestic market that Sweet mentioned is also the basic guarantee for the current industrial construction in East Africa. East Africa is in the transition stage from an agricultural country to an industrial country. Agriculture is still the main body of the East African economy, and the consumption power level of East African farmers is above the world average.

The most typical one is the light industry in East Africa, led by the textile industry. In the past, most of the light industry products were almost consumed by the country's agricultural population. Only a small amount was exported as basic industrial products to developed countries such as Germany and used as raw materials for new industrial production for further processing.

Sweet mentioned: "With the construction of the textile industry in the west, the expansion of the textile industry in various regions, as well as technological progress, improvement of mechanical efficiency and other factors, my country's textile industry production has ushered in great progress."

"East Africa does not lack basic materials such as cotton, linen, silk, and wool required for textile industry production. In the past, the cotton planting area in East Africa has been continuously expanding. From north to south, from east to west, a large number of cotton fields have been constructed and put into production, with various varieties and types. It is diverse, and the output of long-staple cotton is second only to Egypt.”

"At the same time, East Africa is one of the few major hemp-growing countries in the world. Ramie, jute, sisal and other hemp are widely cultivated in East Africa, and have reached a considerable scale. Among them, sisal production ranks first in the world."

"The scale of raw silk production is small, but the climate environment in East Africa and the guidance of past national policy support have made my country's raw silk production second only to Asian countries."

"The wool textile industry, whose main raw material is wool, is rapidly forming a scale in southern my country and can basically meet the domestic market demand in the future."

"At the population level, our country's fertility rate has remained at a high level over the years, and the labor force required for various industries is relatively sufficient."

"In conjunction with the support and construction of light industry during the First Five-Year Plan, my country's textile industry has developed rapidly, but this has also placed higher demands on the market, and East Africa's advantages in the domestic textile industry market are not as good as those of other major countries."

This is very understandable. Other major countries in the world are mainly located in the temperate zone, and the temperate zone is characterized by four distinct seasons. Therefore, the demand for clothing is naturally greater than in East Africa. Almost every season has corresponding clothing, and in order to keep warm in winter, Clothes also require more textile raw materials.

This can also be seen from the construction of palaces of European royal families. Palaces in many countries are divided into winter palaces and summer palaces. This was the case in Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the original French Empire. However, it is impossible for East African palaces to be divided into winter palaces and summer palaces. Two will be built during the dry season.

As a tropical country, East Africa has small seasonal changes and is mainly focused on changes in precipitation rather than temperature differences. In this case, East Africans only need simple clothing to meet their daily needs.

This is obviously relatively unfavorable news for the textile industry in East Africa. On the one hand, East Africa has sufficient raw materials, but on the other hand, demand is low. The expansion of the textile industry in East Africa will inevitably solve market problems. Sweet said: "Therefore, my country's textile industry has passed the stage of only catering to the domestic market in the past. In the future, the further development of the textile industry will inevitably lead to more international markets."

"However, the competitiveness in the international market is not strong. The textile industry has always been the shortcomings of East Africa's light industry. my country's light industry has developed vigorously in recent years and finally formed a system, but it has also lost valuable time to enter the international market."

The development of light industry in East Africa can be said to be a weak link in the field of industrial development in East Africa. It was not until the First Five-Year Plan period that many light industry products in East Africa were able to achieve industrial production.

Light industry is simply summarized as food, textiles, furniture, papermaking, printing, daily chemicals, stationery, cultural supplies, sporting goods industry and other industries that are closely related to people's lives.

It can be said without mercy that the most basic products such as pots and pans have gone through a long process from scratch in East Africa.

In the early days, East Africa's light industrial products basically relied on imports and handicrafts. For example, the most common product, bricks, East Africa's early production basically started by inheriting the brick kilns of the Zanzibar Sultanate.

Even now, the gap for light industrial products in East Africa is relatively large. On the one hand, productivity still exists in the form of traditional handicrafts, with weak technology and low output. On the other hand, East Africa's rapidly increasing population has increased East Africa's demand for light industrial products. It has been in the ascending stage.

Moreover, this traditional handicraft industry still has some tenacious vitality in East Africa, which is one of the important reasons why East Africa is still not considered an industrial country.

Therefore, East Africa's light industry was quite weak in the first thirty years. Except for important areas such as the textile industry, many light industries basically did not exist. Instead, they relied on imports and traditional handicrafts to meet the country's demand for light industry products.

It was only after the establishment of the heavy industry system in East Africa that it began to drive the development of light industry and realize the large-scale production of most light industry products.

However, it still faces serious problems such as small scale, scattered production, and poor technology. Therefore, during the First Five-Year Plan, East Africa focused on the problem of weak light industry development and invested in a number of new modern light industry factories.

Among them, the cotton textile industry occupies the majority, especially in the western Angola region, which has formed a new cotton textile industry production base.

The food industry in East Africa is a dominant industry in the light industry. Relying on East Africa's rich products and huge market demand, it developed earlier. In particular, the northeast and north are relatively developed and can become competitive with European and American countries.

However, under the overall national conditions of East Africa, which focuses on investment in heavy industry, the serious imbalance or lack of light industry is a serious problem, which cannot be quickly eliminated in a short time.

Moreover, the overall light industry in East Africa is insufficient, but some parts of it are facing the problem of lack of market. This contradictory phenomenon is becoming more and more prominent in East Africa.

Therefore, while looking for markets for East African light industry, we must continue to upgrade and transform the East African light industry sector at the same time.

The task of the East African government is to guide and integrate the domestic handicraft industry to transform into light industry, and at the same time seek many international markets to inject development momentum into some of the already developed light industries in East Africa.

(End of chapter)