African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1174 Steel Trade in 1914

Rhine City.

Recently, East Africa has not had much leisure to pay attention to the changes in the war situation in Europe. On the one hand, East Africa has been too well-fed in the past two years, with its colonies alone expanding by nearly one million square kilometers. On the other hand, East Africa's Three-Five Plan is about to be concluded.

The colonial expansion was accompanied by the expansion of East Africa's overseas markets. East Africa has achieved great results in the Far East, South America, the Middle East, West Africa and other regions. As long as East Africa can maintain its competitive advantage in these relatively neutral market regions after the war, even if it shrinks, the size of the overseas market that East Africa can accommodate will exceed that of France and be not inferior to that of Britain and the United States.

Britain has too many colonies with high economic value, while the United States, like East Africa, is also conquering overseas markets and is currently the strongest competitor for East Africa's overseas market expansion.

Siwei Te said to the government officials: "Last year's steel production report has been summarized. In 1914, our country's steel production reached million tons, a record high. Especially due to the impact of the European war in the second half of the year, our country's steel production increased by more than million tons."

"During the same period, the US steel production should be around 27 million to 30 million tons. The US steel industry has recovered due to the war, but the previous economic crisis has hit the US steel industry hard, so US steel production cannot be restored to its peak for the time being. However, we may face more intense competition from the US steel industry next year."

"The specific data for European countries is difficult to determine due to the war, but the overall data should have increased. About four million tons of steel produced in my country flowed to Europe in various forms, with France, Russia, and Austria-Hungary ranking the top three respectively."

France's luck can be said to be quite bad. Its homeland lacks the basic raw materials for the development of the steel industry. After Belgium was conquered by the German army, the development of France's steel industry was dealt another heavy blow.

Before the war, France had to import a lot of coal and steel from Belgium, but the production of France's colonies was limited. At the same time, due to the war, young and strong labor force in France flowed to the army, and the industrial population was relatively scarce. Industries such as steel were inevitably affected. This led to a shortage of demand for steel in France, which further contributed to France becoming the largest buyer of steel in East Africa in 1914.

As for Russia, it lacked everything. Its pre-war steel production was only comparable to that of France, but the number of people mobilized by Russia far exceeded that of other countries.

It can be said that apart from having an ample supply of people, Russia does not produce anything that can meet its own needs, especially industrial products, which are extremely dependent on exports from other industrial countries. However, Russia is not as rich as France, and instead owes a lot of national debts, which makes Russia's purchasing power very limited.

However, East Africa did not dare to use the credit of the Russian government as proof of loan. After all, according to Ernst's understanding, it was a question whether the Russian regime could be preserved in the future. If it lent money to Russia at this time, it was likely that even the principal would be confiscated by the Soviet regime in the end.

The most important of these are Russia’s collateral, such as mines, oil fields, etc. Even if they are obtained, East Africa cannot be developed in the future.

Therefore, East Africa's trade with Russia was mainly carried out in the form of real gold and silver, or in the form of barter. This meant that East African merchant ships in the Black Sea always carried large quantities of goods on their return voyages. As to whether East Africa could use them or not, that was another matter.

It is easy to understand why the Austro-Hungarian Empire became East Africa's third largest steel importer and exporter in Europe. After all, the Austro-Hungarian Empire's steel was not as good as that of France, while its population was far greater than that of France.

In addition to orders from the three major countries, many other small European countries were also particularly dependent on East Africa's steel output, which brought East Africa's steel production to an astonishing 1914 million tons in .

You should know that at the end of World War I in the previous life, the steel production of the United States was only more than 40 million tons, and East Africa is now less than 3 million tons away from the threshold of 40 million tons.

"There is still room for steel production to increase. Except for Europe, most countries in the world, except for a few countries such as the United States, are in a temporary steel shortage. The steel production gap in these countries was originally caused by the inability of European steel producers to export due to the war."

"This part of the market is not inferior to the European market, so my country's steel industry still has room for further growth this year, and the output will exceed 40 million tons in the near future." "Among steel exports, special steel is particularly prominent. In addition to Germany and the United Kingdom, many countries need to import special steel from my country for military production, especially artillery."

Before the outbreak of the war, East Africa had already become one of the three major producers of special steel, along with Germany and Britain. Britain had a profound historical accumulation, while Germany had strong technology. As for East Africa, it was just a gift from God.

Except for tungsten, most of the other major alloy-producing minerals basically come from East Africa. Among them, East Africa's manganese, chromium and aluminum rank first in the world, and copper production is also in the first echelon. Nickel, lead and zinc are not lacking. In fact, East Africa also has tungsten mines, but the scale of tungsten mines in East Africa is far less than that of the Far East Empire.

This resulted in the East African steel industry, especially in the production of high-end steel products, having the best time, location and people. Even old imperialist countries such as France, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire had to increase their orders for special steel from East Africa to cast artillery and other weapons after the end of 1914.

"As my country's steel industry flourished, imports of iron ore and coal from other regions also increased significantly, especially from the Middle East and South America. The total mineral output of the three regions of Tsarist Russia increased the fastest."

The large amount of minerals imported by East Africa from Russia are naturally used to pay off debts. As for the Middle East, in fact, in addition to oil, there are many other minerals, but they are easily overlooked under the cover of oil energy.

The current big brother of the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire, has had close relations with East Africa in recent years, and trade between the two countries has been increasing, which has led to further prosperity in the entire Middle East's trade with East Africa.

In fact, South America is relatively short of coal. However, due to the limited industrial scale of South American countries, they have become one of the sources of coal for East Africa. After all, the coal resources on the west coast of East Africa are not rich, but there is no shortage of iron ore.

After all, the west coast of East Africa was once integrated with South America, so it is not impossible that the mineral resources of the two places would converge. For example, Brazil was the world's second largest iron ore exporter after Australia in its past, and gave birth to mining giants such as Vale.

In contrast, there are large amounts of iron ore on the west coast of East Africa and other areas on the west coast of Africa, such as the Belgian Congo, the Cameroon colony, and Guinea in the past.

However, East Africa's coal is distributed in the east and south, so it becomes profitable to import iron ore from South American countries and then transport it to the west coast of East Africa by sea.

Ernst is quite satisfied with the development of the steel industry in East Africa. He added: "In the development of the steel industry, we should pay special attention to regions outside Europe."

"Although the steel prices in Europe are the most lucrative right now because of the war in Europe, we can still make more money by exporting to Europe."

"But the war in Europe will eventually end, so European steel trade can only be considered a short-term benefit. If we really want the East African steel industry to develop steadily in the future, we must pay special attention to Asia, Africa and Latin America."

"Especially for overseas mineral investment, such as Australia, Brazil, Peru and other regions, there is great potential. Now is the window period. Our main competitor in overseas land grabbing is only the United States. Therefore, East African capital should go overseas, especially in the backward areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America, to act first."

As soon as the war in Europe was over, the old powers resumed normal production and would certainly try every means to expel the United States and East Africa again. Therefore, many businesses in Europe today, although profitable, will only last for four or five years. This time is enough for East Africa to expand its territory outside Europe and the United States.

(End of this chapter)