African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1067 Urbanization and National Strength
Simply put, rural areas with good development potential and other favorable conditions will definitely receive special attention so that limited resources can be utilized to the fullest extent.

During the First and Second Five-Year Plans, although East Africa emphasized balanced development, it was inevitable that East African cities, especially large cities, had great advantages in industrialization and developed significantly faster than other regions.

This was actually also a problem faced by the Soviet Union in its early days. Although the Soviet Union's early urban development policy emphasized controlling the development of large cities, decades of time have proven that it has achieved little effect.

Ernst once tried to develop East Africa according to the German urban model, but decades of practice proved that this was not feasible.

Judging from the population and land area alone, it is not very realistic. Take Germany for example. Its land area is less than 650,000 square kilometers, which is only one twentieth of East Africa. However, Germany's population is as high as more than 60 million, which is a little more than half of East Africa.

Therefore, Germany's population density and terrain factors support the German urban development model, but are not suitable for East Africa. If East Africa wants to learn the German model, at least the population of East Africa will increase more than three times, because East Africa's area is slightly larger than the whole of Europe, but its population is much smaller than Europe as a whole.

The current urban development model in East Africa is mainly a block model, especially the three major blocks of the central, eastern and western regions, which form regional urban groups and realize nationwide industrial production cooperation through national transportation. After all, a province in East Africa is basically equivalent to the area of ​​a medium-sized European country, and three to four provinces are almost the same size as Germany, France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire respectively.

East Africa is different from other super-large countries such as the Far Eastern Empire, Russia, and the United States. Among these countries, except East Africa, the development of the countries is more unbalanced. For example, the economic center of the United States is in the northeast, Russia in the west, and the Far Eastern Empire in the southeast.

Although there is some gap between the western part of East Africa and the eastern part, this gap is not as obvious as in other countries. This has also shaped the urban layout of East Africa. From the perspective of balanced urban distribution alone, East Africa is between Europe and other regions of the world.

In general, East African cities are not as balanced as Germany, nor as over-concentrated as other countries, which involves issues such as resource utilization efficiency.

In urban development, the efficiency of public resource utilization is closely related to population. Large cities with large populations can improve resource utilization and thus reduce construction costs.

Take gas stations for example. Because of the concentrated population in big cities, the utilization rate of gas stations is generally higher than that in small and medium-sized cities. In rural areas, the utilization rate is even lower, especially in remote areas.

The same is true for typical public resources such as schools and hospitals. For example, the primary school Ernst attended in his previous life was a typical village primary school. When Ernst was in school, there were hundreds of students. When Ernst grew up, it was difficult to maintain more than 30 students all year round. Some village primary schools even had only single-digit students. This would result in a serious waste of resources.

Of course, public resources such as schools and hospitals are industries that are closely related to people’s livelihood, and sometimes economic benefits cannot be considered unilaterally. Therefore, when investing in East African resources, we must consider many aspects to maximize the overall benefits.

This is the main reason why Ernst asked government officials to consider issues from multiple perspectives. With the rapid development of industrialization today, East Africa must inevitably make some trade-offs and sacrifices in order to achieve sustainable development.

Ernst: "my country's population is currently in a high growth stage, so many problems will not appear yet, but population growth will eventually reach a limit. It is difficult for us to predict the specific year of this limit. Judging from the urbanization rate in my country, especially during the First and Second Five-Year Plans, it is assumed that my country's urbanization rate will increase by about five percentage points every ten years in the future."

"It may take 70 to 80 years for my country to raise its urbanization level to around 70 percent, so we can even use 70 years as a time period to consider the allocation of public resources between urban and rural areas. Of course, judging from the urbanization experience of European and American countries, my country may only need 40 to 50 years to achieve the current level of industrial powers in Europe and the United States. I am more inclined to the latter."

Today, Germany's urbanization rate is more than 60%, while the urbanization rate was about 35% when Germany was unified, which means that it took Germany about 40 years to reach the current level. East Africa's current urbanization level is not as good as that of Germany when it was unified, but the difference is not far. So according to the speed of German industrial development, it will take at least 40 years for East Africa's urbanization to reach the current German level, and at least 50 years to reach 70%.

It can be seen that industrialization is not easy for any country. Germany's rapid industrialization stage can be said to have mastered the three major advantages of time, location, and people. It took nearly a hundred years from before the unification of Germany.

The difficulty for East Africa to complete industrialization is no less than that for Germany. It is almost impossible to become rich overnight. The same was true for the Soviet Union in the past.

Before World War II, the Soviet Union's urbanization level barely broke through 32%, which means that even if the first two five-year plans were completed, the Soviet Union's industrialization level would be similar to that of East Africa today, or the level at the time of German unification.

Therefore, during the first two five-year plans, the Soviet Union did not actually complete industrialization, but only turned it into an industrial power, which was based on the Soviet Union's huge size.

Today, East Africa defines itself as a semi-industrial country, so the Soviet Union before World War II could only be a semi-industrial country according to East African standards.

If, as Ernst said, under ideal circumstances, East Africa would need at least four or five decades to fully achieve industrialization, then the Soviet Union would need almost the same amount of time.

This is only under ideal conditions. In fact, the Soviet Union's development was not ideal. When the Soviet Union collapsed, urbanization had not reached 70%, which was the industrialization threshold in Ernst's view. Therefore, the Soviet Union was not completely industrialized from beginning to end.

Of course, the "slow" pace of industrialization in East Africa further stimulated Ernst's hope that a war would break out in Europe. If East Africa could catch up with this opportunity, it would be able to greatly reduce the time for its own industrialization.

Moreover, if such an opportunity arises, the growth rate of urbanization in East Africa could even exceed the effect of two five-year plans. The previous war lasted for nearly four years. If this time is longer, it will be more beneficial to East Africa and extraterritorial countries such as the United States.

If the post-war economic depression in capitalist countries is properly planned, East Africa can further narrow the gap with the industrial powers of Europe and the United States.

Ideally, if East Africa could fully utilize World War I and the Great Depression in capitalist countries, it could shorten its development time by at least fifteen years and make up for the gap with European and American countries.

In fact, if the urbanization level in East Africa reaches about 50%, East Africa can gain the same influence as the Soviet Union in the past. After all, East Africa, like the Soviet Union, is a large country. In fact, the United States has already set an example for East Africa. The urbanization level in the United States is currently around 45%, but its economic level has already firmly ranked first in the world. Even though the urbanization levels of the United Kingdom (mainland) and Germany exceed 60% and 70% respectively, it is impossible to make up for the gap in economic size with the United States.

When the urbanization level in East Africa exceeds 50%, there is basically no country other than East Africa itself that can influence the subsequent economic development of East Africa.

Of course, the level of urbanization is an important reference standard for industrial strength, but it is not the only standard. After all, in the past, there were a lot of "parallel imports" in South America, and their urbanization levels were often more than 80% or 90%, but their actual economic levels were a mess.

(End of this chapter)