Chapter 886: Transfer of backward industries
The economic colonization of the Abyssinian Empire was an important step in establishing the East African economic circle, because it was the only independent country with a good economic scale in the East African region.
Like other regions in the world, except for Cape Town in the UK and the Italian Red Sea colonies, none of them has a population of over one million.
Cape Town has a long history of development, having gone through hundreds of years of development from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom. After the end of the South African War, a large number of Boers returned to the Cape Town colony, further increasing the population of Cape Town.
The initial concentration of the Red Sea colonies was the result of population overflow from the Apennine Peninsula. After Germany, Italy has become the mainstream group of European immigrants. In recent years, Mozambique and Angola in East Africa have absorbed a large number of Italian immigrants.
This caused the Italian immigrant group in East Africa to quickly catch up with the Slavic immigrant group. However, the Slavic immigrant group in East Africa mainly came from various regions in the southern part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and had been deeply influenced by Germanization to a certain extent. On the contrary, the number of Slavic immigrants from Tsarist Russia was not large.
The situation of the countries surrounding East Africa is that, except for the Abyssinian Empire, all others are colonies. This is what should be the situation on the African continent. Independent countries like East Africa that are not indigenous are truly oddities.
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First town city.
"Since 1873, a large number of production equipment has been imported from Germany and other places, which has achieved leapfrog development of our industry. However, nearly 20 years have passed and many equipments have fallen behind the times. East Africa's overall industrial technology and equipment also need to be innovated, especially in the non-emerging industrial sector."
East Africa has always wanted to upgrade its industrial system, because most of the equipment imported into East Africa was produced in the 1970s, but some of the equipment may be even older.
Ernst went on to say: "At present, old industrial equipment is mainly concentrated in the central and eastern inland areas, so this time the technical equipment innovation should start from the inland areas first, and at the same time, it should focus on adopting East Africa's own new technologies and new equipment."
"Of course, old equipment still does not need to be eliminated immediately, but should be transferred to the west and north, so as to achieve further healthy development of my country's overall industrial strength."
In the 1970s, East Africa's territory was still mainly in the east, so the industry was basically deployed in the eastern region. In the 1980s, with the development of the central region by East Africa, a large amount of backward production capacity was transferred to the central region, which promoted the rise of the central heavy industrial base.
Of course, in the mid-to-late 1980s, as East Africa's education, economy, and R&D capabilities improved, East Africa prioritized the deployment of several key industrial sectors in the central region, including electricity, automobiles, railways, etc., and barely achieved the same level of industrial level between the central and eastern regions.
However, compared with the eastern coastal areas, the overall strength of inland East Africa is still relatively weak. After all, the current world's technology center is in Europe, and the eastern coastal areas can more conveniently connect to the world market.
Therefore, coastal cities such as Dar es Salaam and Mombasa are able to stand out among other cities in East Africa. It should be noted that this is the result of the East African government taking sides and giving priority to inland areas in its policies.
"The current development level of my country's inland areas is good and they are already competitive with the eastern coastal areas. However, except for the central and eastern regions, the economic development of other regions in China is seriously lagging behind, especially the northern region which was incorporated into my country's territory earlier."
"Now that the economic cooperation between East Africa and the Abyssinian Empire is further deepened, we should deploy a number of industries near the Abyssinian Empire to reduce production costs and further optimize the industry."
Although there are a large number of backward industries in East Africa, these industries are relatively advanced in backward areas, especially in remote areas of East Africa.
The northern region of East Africa is not a small place. It mainly includes five major areas: the Azande Plateau, the Upper Nile Basin, the Ethiopian Plateau, the Lake Turkana coastal plains, and the Somali Plains. The overall population size has reached more than 10 million.
Although it is far behind the central and eastern regions, from a national perspective, it temporarily has advantages over the southern and western regions, so the focus of this backward industrial transfer is the northern region.
Of course, there is another consideration for transferring these backward industries to the north, that is, to be closer to the regional market. In the land economy, East Africa itself occupies the central and southern African continent except for Cape Town, so the land-based foreign economy is mainly West Africa in the northwest and North Africa across the Sahara Desert.
After being moved to the north, these old equipment introduced in the 1970s can continue to shine and complete their final retirement mission. As for the end, they will be completely eliminated.
Moreover, it is much easier to migrate equipment to the north now than in the 1970s and 1980s. With the construction and popularization of railways and highways in East Africa, the transportation conditions in East Africa today are much better than they were a decade ago.
In the past, when East African industries migrated inland, all industrial equipment was completed by human and animal power, and the degree of hardship was much greater than it is today.
"The north, especially the northwest, is the bridgehead for my country to connect with West Africa. With the development of the Sigmaringen Royal Territory, Belgian Congo and German Cameroon, the northwest will be an important part of East Africa's foreign trade in the future."
"The central and eastern regions should further optimize their industries, especially in the fields of railways, steel, electricity, automobiles, equipment manufacturing, etc., expand the advantages of emerging industries, and improve the production efficiency of traditional industries. In the field of traditional industries, the future goal of central and eastern East Africa is to catch up with European and American countries."
As for the west, East Africa's positioning in the west, especially the coastal areas, the starting point is relatively high. Regions like Luanda, Cabinda, Benguela, etc., all target Dar es Salaam and Mombasa, so in addition to developing traditional industries, they will also focus on developing emerging industries.
It is the same as the development strategy of East Africa in the central region. After all, the eastern coastal areas of East Africa are anchored to the Eurasian market, the inland areas are anchored to the national market, and the western region will be anchored to the European and American (mainly Latin American) markets in the future.
Countries like Argentina and Brazil have good purchasing power and are important markets that cannot be ignored, especially Argentina, which currently exports a large amount of agricultural products to Europe and has a per capita living standard catching up with developed countries and regions. The East African and Western routes directly connect to South America, so there is a geographical advantage.
Furthermore, Latin America is rich in various natural resources, which can facilitate the purchase of raw materials by the western coastal cities of East Africa, and the western region itself is also rich in resource endowments.
In the past, Angola was one of the resource-rich countries in Africa, especially in oil resources. In addition, it was adjacent to the central industrial zone of East Africa, so it met all the requirements for industrial development.
With the construction of the two railway trunk lines, the region will inevitably be connected with the central and eastern parts in the future and become a major industrial distribution area in East Africa.
Therefore, East Africa attaches much more importance to the west, especially Angola, than the north. In the final analysis, backward industries are the leftovers in the east of East Africa, and the northern region can only eat these leftovers. However, East Africa's arrangement for Angola is obviously not like this.
Apart from the above-mentioned areas, only the southern region does not have a detailed plan. East Africa is not very active in developing the southern region. One reason is that there is only the British Cape Town colony in the south. The relationship between the two sides is poor, so naturally trade exchanges are not frequent and it serves as a buffer zone.
Although the northern part of East Africa also borders the United Kingdom, the transportation conditions in Egypt and Sudan are extremely poor. As for British Somaliland, it is too small to pose a threat to East Africa.
(End of this chapter)
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