Chapter 1045: Chapter 54: The World’s Largest Closed Country

Luanda City.

In a teahouse in Luanda City, a few Germans were discussing the changes in East Africa in recent years. The most common foreigners in Luanda City are Germans, French, and Portuguese, though they each have their own circles.

"Through the First Five-Year Plan, the urban development level in East Africa has significantly improved. When I first came to invest in Luanda City, the south of the factory was still wasteland. In just five years, a large number of various types of factories and buildings have sprung up."

"East Africa is currently undergoing rapid changes. I have also visited some cities on the West Coast and East Coast, and these cities, like Luanda, exhibit vibrant vitality."

"The population of these cities is expanding rapidly, similar to European cities. However, unlike the disorderly growth seen in European societies, the influx of many cheap laborers from rural areas to cities often causes numerous social problems, which are common in European cities."

"However, the quality of urban population in East Africa is evidently higher, thanks to the implementation of compulsory education. Yet education cannot fundamentally solve issues, especially those concerning employment and urban management."

"East Africa, as a directive state, has used administrative means to avoid the issue of unemployment. In Luanda, Africa’s largest city in the west, there isn’t a single unemployed person; most people’s jobs are assigned. The East African Government also hopes to eliminate discrimination caused by work differences through public opinion tactics."

"This includes raising the status of workers, enhancing certain occupational benefits, and praising professions generally discriminated against in European society through newspapers and other media."

"However, I am not optimistic about such actions by the East African Government; it is unfavorable to social competition and progress. However, the current East African Government doesn’t need to consider these problems. As a backward nation, their main task now is to catch up with other countries, so they aren’t frequently encountering such issues."

As a German businessman, Klo has witnessed the rapid development of Luanda City during the First Five-Year Plan and has made considerable profits. In such rapid development, opportunities are indispensable, especially for someone like Klo, engaged in commercial trade.

There are numerous foreign enterprises in East Africa. Besides investing in medium and high-end industries to receive government subsidies and policy benefits, only traders like Klo have gained substantial profits.

Certainly, Klo has mixed feelings about East African national policies. East Africa is undoubtedly a large market, but it is not as free as Europe. Therefore, East Africa limits the scope for traders like Klo to operate. However, due to the relationship between East Africa and Germany, traders like Klo have the chance to profit from East Africa.

But this situation is about to change soon, as on June 12, 1905, the East African Government further expanded on the issue of "opening up."

They welcomed commercial groups or individuals from European countries such as the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Spain to conduct trade activities in East Africa. East Africa will further open its port cities as trading destinations, lift tariff barriers on a batch of goods, and enhance trade exchanges with countries worldwide.

Although East Africa seems to be actively embracing the international market, in reality, after the First Five-Year Plan, many industrial products can already be produced independently in East Africa with high market competitiveness. Therefore, the government only allows certain products to compete with related state-owned companies in East Africa.

Thus, the fundamental reason for this change is still the improvement of East African industrialization. Currently, East Africa’s urbanization level is much lower than Europe’s, yet the industrial scale built through the 1990s and the First Five-Year Plan is not inferior to the world’s major industrial powers.

Although the level of industrialization remains relatively low, given East Africa’s large population, even a low level of industrialization results in a remarkable industrial scale.

In 1904, the urbanization rate in East Africa was around twenty percent; before the First Five-Year Plan, it had already reached twenty-three percent. After the plan, this figure evidently won’t be less than twenty-three percent.

The East African Government estimates it to be about twenty-five or twenty-seven percent. Although this is only a few percentage points increase, according to current East African population data, this could potentially add at least a million industrial workers.

East African Government data estimates at least three million, representing the glorious achievements of the First Five-Year Plan in East Africa, though not as exaggerated as the Soviet Union’s First Five-Year Plan but still unparalleled in the world at the time.

During the Soviet Union’s First Five-Year Plan, at least over a million people flocked to the cities; East Africa’s population might be significantly less than the Soviet Union’s, but it could not be far off.

The primary issue now is East Africa hasn’t conducted relevant population census work yet. According to East African census practices, a nationwide population census occurs every ten years, so the population data won’t be updated until around 1910.

However, even without precise data, the significant changes in East African society are visible to the naked eye. Traders like Klo may feel the changes deeply in East Africa’s coastal cities, but the transformation in the vast inland areas is even more astounding.

Under the political strategy of keeping a low profile, the East African economy also prefers to conceal, including essential industries such as defense, automobile manufacturing, and electricity, with most of them placed in inland areas.

Only through the Central Railway might foreign diplomats get a glimpse of East African development, while traders like Klo are confined to activities within coastal cities.

Currently, East Africa has nearly six hundred cities, while the number of open port cities on the coast doesn’t exceed twenty. Hence, attempting to analyze the true strength of East Africa through the coast is obviously impossible.

Take the eastern part, for example, Dar es Salaam City and Mombasa, although dominant, the total number of coastal cities in the east is merely a dozen, and the economic development levels vary vastly among these coastal cities.

In the East African map, these cities represent no more than twenty points; beyond this, these regions belong entirely to East Africa’s inland areas. Such divisions are not entirely based on the coastline but on the degree of openness.

Thus, the economic share of East Africa’s inland far exceeds that of the coastal cities. Take the most industrially developed central region, where heavy industry accounts for more than seventy percent of the nation’s total (including Tanzania’s west, Zambia, Zimbabwe, southern and eastern Congo, and western Mozambique).

While the coastal areas have extraordinary advantages, they aren’t as exaggerated as many countries in previous generations. During the first and second industrial revolutions, industries mainly developed around resource-rich areas. East Africa’s industrial development resources primarily concentrate in the central and southern regions, making East Africa’s central industrial proportion far surpass that of the coast.

This situation is not uncommon in this era; for example, Germany’s industrial areas are also inland, and Austria-Hungary’s industry is even concentrated in Bohemia (Czech and Slovak regions).

For other nations, exploring the development of East Africa’s inland is extremely challenging, starting with the issue of identity. After East Africa moved its capital, the location of Rhein City deep in the inland provided foreign diplomats with opportunities to delve into East Africa’s hinterland. When First Town City was the capital, the furthest foreigners reached was First Town City, which is only about seventy kilometers from the coastline, basically indistinguishable from a coastal city.

Even after East Africa transitioned its capital to Rhein City, foreign diplomats’ activities remained confined within Rhein City. Preventing foreign powers from infiltrating East Africa has always been a critical task.

In fact, East Africa is much like a large North Korea of previous generations in East Asia, but without the harsh diplomatic conditions and the kind of blockade from a superpower like the United States against North Korea.

The United Kingdom, although the world’s overlord at the time, did not exert control over the world to the exaggerated extent of the United States in later generations.