Bela City.

In East Africa's national positioning, Bela City is quite unique as one of the central cities in the southeastern coastal region, linking the key ports of Dar es Salaam in the north and Maputo in the south.

Over the past decade, Bela City has been the fastest-growing city in East Africa, and now its total population has exceeded 300,000. As the quickest outlet for Bohemian industrial goods and the Lorraine industrial region (including eastern Zimbabwe and Botswana), Bela has almost handled most of the central industrial goods trade.

The new mayor of Bela City, Kelta, said: "Currently, our city's economic level is continuously rising and has become the nation's number one export port for essential materials such as sugar, tobacco, copper, and machinery. Among several eastern coastal cities, it ranks just behind Mombasa City, Dar es Salaam City, and New Hamburg Port City. During the first five-year plan period, our city's industry and economy will surely surpass that of New Hamburg Port City, becoming the third city in eastern East Africa."

Relying on the central industrial area, Bela City is likely to become or even surpass large cities like Mombasa City or Dar es Salaam City in the future, because the industrial level of the central industrial area currently ranks first in East Africa.

Neither Dar es Salaam City nor southern cities like Maputo City can effectively compete with Bela Port, and some goods that were previously exported from southern Zambia and Congo are now more willing to be exported from Bela Port, posing the greatest threat to Dar es Salaam City.

In the past, many countries within East Africa, due to various reasons, were unable to reach consensus on transportation construction, generally building their transportation networks around their own capitals, which weakened transportation cooperation among African countries, making them susceptible to political and warfare influences.

The establishment of East Africa undoubtedly dispelled this sense of regional fragmentation, which is also an important factor in Bela's rapid rise.

Kelta said: "Thanks to the rapid development of Bela Port in the 1990s, Bela City has already become one of the nation's vital industrial cities, which is advantageous for my city in the first five-year plan to compete with other cities."

"Before 1903, our goal is to surpass at least New Hamburg Port City, solidifying our position as the third largest city on the eastern coast; on this basis, our population needs to exceed 400,000 and industrial scale needs to increase by at least 15%."

"Using the backdrop of the first five-year plan, we will further develop our city's petroleum and chemical industries, becoming the inland oil and chemical raw material supply center."

With the rise of the petroleum and chemical industries in East Africa, most coastal cities there have gained new developmental opportunities. As the central industrial area does not produce oil, it must rely on imports or the northern part of East Africa.

And Bela is the port for importing oil to the central industrial area, with oil resources from Austria-Hungary, Romania, and Russia first arriving at Bela Port and then being transported inland via rail.

Leveraging this advantage, during the first five-year plan, the East Africa Central Government plans to deploy a larger-scale petroleum industry at Bela Port, focusing mainly on refining and storage and transport, producing petroleum products such as fuel, lubricants, paraffin, asphalt, petroleum coke, and providing corresponding raw materials for petrochemical production.

The establishment of Bela City's petroleum industry is intimately related to the central industrial region's vast energy demand; without this demand, there would be no need to deploy related industries in Bela.

This is easy to understand; without industry, the demand for energy is naturally small. The shift from a Far East Empire being an oil-exporting country to the largest oil-importing country was due to industrial development.

Today, in the energy field, coal's position as the overlord remains stable, but East Africa has begun large-scale development towards oil and natural gas and has surpassed the United States in this field, ranking first in the world.

In this big context, Bela and other important coastal cities are all vigorously exploiting the potential of the oil industry to inject new vitality into East African industry.

Of course, the world's three major oil-producing regions are the United States, Europe, and East Africa, and East Africa has now reached the world's third position in terms of output, but still imports large quantities of oil from abroad, showcasing East African government's emphasis on the oil industry.

Kelta: "The oil industry is expected to become one of the significant industries of the 20th century, just like the electricity industry has already demonstrated significant power in various countries, driving the development of numerous related industries and becoming one of the important markers of industrial development in each country."

"With the development of internal combustion engines and the chemical industry, the future prospects of the oil industry are already very bright; oil has become our second-largest energy source in East Africa, second only to coal, so developing the oil industry is a future focus for East Africa. Our city also needs to seize the opportunity to become a national center for oil refining and by-product processing."

Relative to East Africa, currently, the global demand for oil in other countries is not large, so oil being the second-largest energy in East Africa does not hold true for other countries, possibly not even surpassing the usage of natural gas because the history of large-scale application of natural gas predates oil. Many natural gas sources come from by-products of coal mining, forming the natural gas industry early alongside early coal industry development.

During the British industrial revolution, the natural gas industry formed and became the major energy source for Europe's lighting industry.

Kelta: "In addition to this, during the first five-year plan, our city plans to build a new oil refinery with the latest technology and revolutionize our steel industry, upgrade equipment at Bela City Steel Plant, construct a coal washing plant, a second pharmaceutical plant, the fifth power plant, and other enterprises, and connect to the aluminum industry in Xinde Town to develop aluminum product processing, etc."

In the 1990s, through collaboration with German chemical and pharmaceutical companies, Bela City's pharmaceutical industry became relatively developed. Based on this, East Africa has focused on strengthening the local pharmaceutical industry, which is mainly export-oriented.

From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, many chemical and pharmaceutical companies were indistinguishable, with Germany being the strongest state in this field.

Of course, during that era, pharmaceutical companies were relatively chaotic, with many medicines not undergoing effective testing and regulation, especially psychiatric medications, which were likely illegal substances akin to people's incomplete understanding of the harmful effects of radioactive materials; similarly, most people of that era did not fully understand these substances.

What truly led Europe and even the entire world to realize their harmfulness was the extensive use by the military during the two world wars, leading to the final conclusion.

Therefore, although the East African government strongly supports Bela City's pharmaceutical companies, it is very cautious in their use within the national healthcare system. However, this does not hinder the profitability of the pharmaceutical industry. East Africa's cautious domestic use or outright prohibition allows for exports without psychological burden, and many medications do not face sales difficulties due to their addiction effects, similar to tobacco.

Besides manufacturing, aluminum product processing is also a key industry under the first five-year plan in Bela City. East Africa has already laid out electrowinning aluminum industry at Xinde Town near the mouth of the Zambezi River, and the critical reason for constructing Bela City's fifth power plant is to provide electrical support to Xinde Town, with the two cities cooperating in development and, if Tete City is included, it becomes a three-city collaboration.

Xinde Town itself has a short development history, and the electrowinning aluminum industry demands a great deal of electricity, leaving a sizeable energy gap. In this situation, drawing electricity from nearby Bela City and Tete City is very crucial. Tete City is rich in coal resources, so the cost of electricity generation is low, while Bela City, as an important port city, facilitates coal imports from India and southern East Africa. Additionally, its large population and strong industrial base mean ample electricity generation, allowing the two locations to supply part of the electricity gap to Xinde Town.