African Entrepreneurship Records

Chapter 1015 Market

Ernst said: "Light industry has begun to receive attention in the current development stage of our country, but industrialization is a complex and huge issue."

“In the past thirty years or so, our development focus in East Africa has been agriculture, infrastructure and heavy industry. Even if the First Five-Year Plan is completed, the problem of East Africa’s light industry cannot be solved. Therefore, during the Second Five-Year Plan, the development of light industry will become One of the key tasks of the government.”

Although East Africa is already a well-deserved world power in terms of size, its development level is slightly better than Japan and Tsarist Russia among world powers. Its capital, technology, and foundation are relatively poor compared with those of relatively developed countries.

The advantages of East Africa as a colonial country have moderated this problem. For example, in terms of per capita agricultural product consumption, East Africa is much higher than Russia and Japan. However, due to insufficient productivity and not reaching the level of the United States, it is barely on par with many European countries. Otherwise, according to East Africa The amount of land, cultivated land and resources should exceed that of most European countries.

After all, the current population of East Africa does not exceed 100 million, while Europe has a population of more than 300 million. At the same time, the total area of ​​East Africa is more than two million square kilometers larger than that of Europe.

"If the Russo-Japanese War breaks out now, it will be a favorable opportunity for us in East Africa, mainly to expand the Russian market. Without considering colonies, Russia has the second largest population in the world, the largest area in the world, and industrial and agricultural development. The level is above the world average.”

"Russia has always been one of our country's important markets in the past, but the competition we face in the Russian market is also relatively fierce, including Western European and American capital, which has a first-mover advantage in Russia."

"So the Russo-Japanese War will be an important opportunity for our country to expand the Russian market. Even if our market share in Russia is increased by one percentage point, it will be a huge progress."

For a country with a population of over 100 million, one percentage point may mean a market of one million people, which is very attractive to any country.

Of course, Ernst did not want to support Russia's victory over Japan, but if East Africa showed a little more goodwill to Russia than other countries in this war, it would be more convenient for East Africa's commercial trade with Russia.

Germany during the Russo-Japanese War in the previous life is a good example. While Britain and the United States clearly supported Japan, France did not support Russia's conflict with Japan in the Far East because of Britain and its own interests.

This is understandable. Although France's relations with Russia continue to heat up, the French government's purpose is to let Russia suppress Germany, rather than waste energy on the Far East and Japan. This made France remain neutral during the Russo-Japanese War, but Germany gave Russia’s greatest support.

Of course, although Germany benefited from the Russo-Japanese War, this kind of short-term "friendship" would ultimately be difficult to play due to the large geopolitical and political differences between Germany and Russia.

East Africa is different. There is almost no fundamental conflict of interest between East Africa and Russia. This means that if East Africa supports Russia in the war, the subsequent relationship between the two countries can be further improved. Although the current Russian government is likely to only have a lifespan of more than ten years, East Africa It is the window period of more than ten years that is needed to promote the development of the country.

"We must seize every opportunity so that we can achieve rapid and healthy development of East African industry in a relatively short period of time. Therefore, in the middle and later stages of the First Five-Year Plan, we must quickly solve the problems in our country's industrial product market."

It is easy to expand the industrial scale of East Africa in a short period of time, but the market is relatively fixed. If the market problem cannot be solved, East Africa can only achieve its goal by further squeezing the potential of its domestic citizens, and this is only the last resort.

At present, there are only a handful of countries in the world that have independent power. Excluding a few top-ranking powers, most of them are colonial or semi-colonial countries. Therefore, in the foreign market of East African industry, Russia is an important link, with a large scale and relatively strong consumption power. , and cannot form competitiveness with East African industries. Russia's industry is weak. Although East Africa and Russia seem to be incompatible with each other, East Africa has left Russia behind in the field of heavy industry, and in the field of light industry, Russia does not have the advantages of East Africa.

Take the textile industry as an example. The Russian textile industry, like Germany, lacks the supply of raw materials. In order to solve this problem in the past, the Soviet Union built a large number of new water conservancy projects in Central Asia to alleviate this problem. However, although the current Russian government has similar ideas, it cannot It is powerless to do what the Soviet Union did, and this is the advantage of East Africa.

Among the foreign markets in East Africa, the most important ones are the Central and Eastern European markets, and Central Europe is undoubtedly the German regional market dominated by Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Eastern European market can basically be summarized as Russia, followed by the Far East market, and finally the It is the Middle East market, which is also the three largest foreign market in East Africa.

In addition to the three major foreign markets, the South American market is expanding rapidly, but it is ultimately unable to compete with the three major markets. East Africa also lacks the opportunity to accelerate its entry into the South American market. The last time it was due to Spain's defeat in the Spanish-American War, East Africa passed Spain's Guanxi has a strong presence in the South American market.

Although Spain and Portugal are the main suzerain countries in South America, the South American economy is now mainly controlled by the United Kingdom. If this were not the case, the increase in East Africa's trade in the Argentine market should be able to increase rapidly.

Many South American countries are economic colonies, and their politics and economy are greatly influenced by European countries. Therefore, if East Africa wants to achieve outstanding results there, it will be necessary unless Europe has no time to take care of South America.

In the previous life, this opportunity was World War I. When European countries had no time to think about anything else, the United States took the opportunity to enter the South American market and replace the local advantages of other countries. Therefore, before a large-scale war broke out in Europe, East Africa could not launch its expansion in South America smoothly. Infiltration work.

The Far East market and the Middle East market are also in a similar situation. In the Far East market, the "economic alliance" of the United States, Britain, and Japan has an absolute advantage, while East Africa is at a disadvantage locally, so East Africa can only develop in areas with relatively weak economies. And focus on defense.

The size of the Middle East market can only barely meet the needs of East Africa, and there is not much room for further growth. After all, the Middle East is still dominated by the Ottoman Empire, and due to climate reasons, the Middle East now has a small population and insufficient spending power. The Persian Gulf, the richest in future generations, Along the coast, the most abundant thing now is pirates.

Therefore, among the many markets, the Russian market is the most important to East Africa at present. Even if the Soviet Russian regime comes to power in the future, they will not be able to completely get rid of the influence of East Africa. After all, Russia’s geographical location determines Russia’s certain preference for tropical products such as rubber. rely.

Therefore, the layout of East Africa in Russia, even if it is affected by regime changes, will not be too big, and as long as Ernst takes advantage of his foresight, he can avoid some losses and maximize benefits.

Ernst said: "Industrialization cannot be done behind closed doors. We in East Africa are not as good as Russia in some conditions, so we cannot ignore the importance of the international market. And the connection with the international market has always been East Africa's disadvantage, which is very important to all of us." Government departments and enterprises have put forward higher requirements.”

Even if East Africa develops a planned economy, it must have flexible means to alleviate some of the shortcomings of the planned economy. The planned economy also requires commercial trade, especially when East Africa's resource situation is not as developed as Russia.

Therefore, connecting with the international market is a long-term task for many state-owned enterprises in East Africa. Regardless of the previous life of the United States or the Soviet Union, although their economies have gone to two extremes, they all have their own forms of markets. It is impossible for East Africa to establish an economic mutual assistance committee, so East Africa’s foreign trade and The connection of the country’s current planned economic system also requires long-term exploration.

(End of chapter)