African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1097 Three-Five Plan
The war on the Pirate Coast was just a minor episode for East Africa. Although the East African army performed poorly, it was also expected by the East African government.

Since the South African War, the East African army has hardly fought any wars for twenty years. Moreover, they are fighting in the desert on a land of nearly 100,000 square kilometers. It is unrealistic to control the situation with only a few thousand people.

In fact, East Africa finally stabilized the local situation by relying on the old method of immigration. East Africa migrated nearly 2,000 people from the Somalia region, combined with more than 10,000 immigrants from the Far East, to rebuild its governance framework in the Beibu Gulf territory, and relied on these immigrants to support the stability of supplies in the later stages of the war.

The main purpose is to replace the oases, villages and water sources originally controlled by the indigenous people. The most important issue is the water source. When the local indigenous people in East Africa are not cleared, these indigenous people will try every means to help the guerrillas, including poisoning the water sources of the East African army.

This forced the early East African army to send troops to guard water sources such as wells, and once the residents were replaced by their own people, it greatly accelerated East Africa's control over the local area.

As for the original indigenous inhabitants, they naturally suffered retaliation from the East African government. They were either eliminated along with their resistance organizations, or left their homes and integrated into other countries and regions.

The East African conquest of the Pirate Coast can be said to have given the British a sigh of relief. After all, despite its advantages in weapons and manpower, the East African Army did not show its due advantages. In this way, Britain did not worry about East Africa posing a threat to British colonies such as Qatar and Bahrain.

In this war, Britain only provided some insignificant support to the natives of the Pirate Coast. The situation in East Africa was so bad. The poor performance of the East African Army can be said to have provided Britain with a "peace of mind".

Of course, Ernst himself believed that the performance of the East African army was still satisfactory. After all, this was a battle in a different place, and East Africa had no intelligence advantage. Moreover, guerrilla tactics were inherently very troublesome. The fact that East Africa was able to pacify the situation in the Beibu Gulf territory within half a year was enough to make Ernst feel satisfied.

Moreover, Ernst believes that East Africa was able to settle the Beibu Gulf territory within half a year mainly because of the small local population. If it were any country with a population of over one million and a certain level of civilization, East Africa would need to think twice.

In addition, although the troops sent by East Africa to the Beibu Gulf territory this time are elite soldiers from the Northwest Military Region, under the background of East African military reform, this kind of pure infantry and traditional cavalry have actually been marginalized in the East African Army. In order to hide its shortcomings, East Africa is unlikely to send armored units and motorized infantry to participate in the war, as that would easily scare the British in Qatar next door.

Finally, and most importantly, this war of conquest of the Pirate Coast was originally an unjust war. As an imperialist country, East Africa brazenly invaded the Pirate Coast and was not on the side of morality. In this case, East Africa achieved its goal with relatively low losses by relying on the hegemony of imperialism, which was worthy of East Africa's own celebration.

Of course, Ernst's satisfaction with the outcome and process of the war does not represent the attitude of the military, especially the participating troops of the Western Military Region. It is conceivable that the East African military will launch a wave of self-examination and self-correction, summarize the experience of this round of war, reshape the internal organizational structure of the East African Army, and respond to the war situation.

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When East Africa launched a war in the Persian Gulf region, the Third Five-Year Plan was also underway in East Africa. With the previous accumulation and the support of the first two Five-Year Plans, East Africa's domestic industry had made great progress, surpassing many former industrial powers. Therefore, East Africa's enthusiasm for the Third Five-Year Plan remained unprecedented.

During the Third Five-Year Plan, East Africa formally included the development of light industry in its national development priorities. Although light industry, as the weak link of East Africa's industry, was significantly improved during the Second Five-Year Plan, overall, it still could not compete with other industrial countries in terms of quality and quantity.

One of the main reasons for the easing of relations between East Africa and the United Kingdom is that East Africa's industries are different from those of the United Kingdom. This difference mainly refers to the fact that East Africa is not good at light industry, so the development of light industry is relatively slow, which is unacceptable to East Africa.

At the same time, East Africa is facing a serious problem in developing light industry. That is, the plan cannot perfectly solve the problem of market commodity differentiation. After all, people have different needs. Take the most basic light industrial products as an example. A skirt, even if it is made of the same material, can be divided into hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of products by cutting form, color, thickness, height, width and other characteristics, so as to meet the different needs of each individual.

It is not so difficult within East Africa, as this kind of individual demand can be suppressed temporarily. However, once it comes to the international market, people in other countries will not buy into the East African government’s account, and the monotonous product variety will make it almost impossible to compete with peers.

One of the reasons for this situation is that the East African government lacks computing power. Even if all the mathematicians and statisticians in the country were devoted to the task, it would be impossible to complete this workload, not to mention the lack of advanced and efficient computing machinery in East Africa.

Therefore, in order to develop light industry during the Third Five-Year Plan, East Africa’s economic policies must have made some changes, loosening up the economy appropriately and leaving this part of the problem to the market.

As a monarchy, East Africa has never rejected the market from the very beginning. The reason why it has coordinated the national economy completely in a planned manner is actually for the sake of efficiency. In order to improve the country's industrial level in a short period of time, it is inevitable that it will turn a blind eye to some problems.

Of course, East Africa still needs to implement this kind of economic policy change step by step, and it will not be carried out all at once. Just like East Africa had already conducted experiments in the 1896s before implementing a fully planned economy, the period from 1900 to was even called the "quasi-planned economy era."

At the same time, East Africa’s current round of economic policy adjustments is also aimed at connecting with foreign investment. If East Africa wants to reap more dividends from a possible war, it must inevitably connect with the international market.

At the same time, as the quality of industry improves, East Africa needs to open its doors wider so that some of its already relatively strong industrial sectors can compete directly with other industrial countries. This will also create competition for East Africa's existing industries and prevent East African companies from resting on their laurels.

To give a typical example, why the US civilian shipbuilding industry has been difficult to develop for a long time in the past is, to a certain extent, inseparable from the Jones Act promulgated by the United States. After the end of World War I in 1920, the US Congress formally passed the Jones Act, also known as the "Maritime Commerce Act."

The Act stipulates that ships sailing within the United States must be manufactured in the United States and registered in the United States; or at least 75% of the ship's ownership must be owned by American citizens, and the crew must be American citizens. Due to the over-protection of the US shipbuilding industry, this Act has turned the US civilian shipbuilding industry into a greenhouse flower, completely losing its global competitiveness.

Of course, the failure of the US civilian shipbuilding industry to develop in the past was definitely related to deindustrialization, high labor costs and other factors, which was almost a common problem in many developed countries in the past.

But the problem is that, except for the era of sailing warships and special periods such as World War I and World War II, the United States' civilian shipbuilding industry has been difficult to compete with other countries for most of the time.

Take the present for example, Britain is of course the most developed country in the world, and Britain has vigorously developed the financial industry, making British industry no longer as good as that of the United States and Germany. However, the cost of Britain's shipbuilding industry is much lower than that of the United States and Germany, and it monopolizes most of the civilian ship market.

Therefore, only by allowing competition to exist can domestic enterprises actively transform and upgrade. Of course, even if East Africa opens up some industrial fields, competition will be extremely limited. After all, East Africa's light industry is now too weak, so it still needs continued policy support. Only after the light industry develops to the current level of East Africa's heavy industry can we discuss more market opening issues.

(End of this chapter)