African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1075: Chapter 84: Transformation of Emerging Industries

Rhein City.

With the Second Five-Year Plan also entering its final stage, and the first decade of this century about to come to an end, the workload East Africa faces in 1909 is far greater than at the conclusion of the First Five-Year Plan.

”After the Second Five-Year Plan ends, our country’s industrial achievements will certainly reach a new height, especially in the realm of emerging industries. Thanks to early planning and deployment, many sectors have now developed to a very considerable scale and have become the most outstanding part of our country’s industrial exports.”

”Industries such as electric power, automobiles, tractors, shipbuilding, railways, petroleum, chemicals and the like are playing an increasingly evident driving role for our industrial system. These emerging industries are now in the process of becoming, or have already become, the main industrial types in the world, replacing part of the industries from the First Industrial Revolution, enabling our country to overtake other nations in multiple major industrial categories.”

A number of emerging industries, after twenty to thirty years of development, have already taken shape in East Africa, and at the same time have accelerated East Africa’s industrial advance toward becoming an industrial great power.

Take railways as an example. Railways were born in the First Industrial Revolution, so railways should also be considered a traditional industrial type. This is especially true in other countries, where there has not yet been any major transformation in railways, and they remain in the steam Era.

But the situation is different in East Africa. After East Africa’s industrial upgrading, railways have now already begun shifting from the steam Era to the internal-combustion Era; internal-combustion traction has become the mainstream on East African railways. This transformation means that East African railways also fall under emerging industries rather than ordinary traditional industries, and East Africa has already seen the appearance of electrified railways, with the railway sector still in the process of continual metamorphosis.

The qualitative change in the railway sector has enabled East Africa to leap from being a weak country in railway industry to becoming a major power in global railway manufacturing.

In steam locomotives, East Africa found it very difficult to surpass the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the United States and other countries, because for historical reasons they have already developed steam locomotives to the extreme. Especially the United Kingdom, the earliest to industrialize, whose steam locomotive technology stands alone in the world and, while far in the lead, is still making continuous progress.

It was just like how, in the previous life, when the Far East Empire was developing gasoline vehicles, it was very hard to surpass Germany and Japan. Although the Far East Empire’s automobile industry grew at an astonishing speed, this did not mean that Germany’s and Japan’s automobile industries were standing still; they firmly held the all-round advantages in the auto sector and used various means to suppress other countries’ automobile industries.

But once new-energy vehicles appeared, and after the Far East Empire and the United States switched tracks and developed along the new route at the same time, Germany and Japan were completely at a loss.

East Africa is now in a similar situation in that it has achieved a track change in the railway industry. The internal-combustion engine is roughly equivalent to new energy—at least compared with steam it is so.

In the steam Era, it was very difficult for East Africa to surpass traditional industrial powers such as the United Kingdom, but once the track is changed, the situation is completely different. While other countries around the world in the same period also have internal-combustion locomotives running on their railways, they are mainly experimental models, whereas East Africa has already realized large-scale production and deployment of internal-combustion locomotives.

Thus, the world’s railways can currently be divided into two systems: one still dominated by traditional steam locomotives, and one dominated by new internal-combustion locomotives. There is no doubt that, relative to steam locomotives, internal-combustion locomotives are more advanced and will, in the future, replace steam locomotives on a large scale. This also means that, as time passes, East Africa’s railways have in fact already pulled ahead of those of other countries in the world.

This lead is mainly reflected in the change of technical system; it is a fact that internal-combustion locomotives are more efficient than steam locomotives, and East Africa has already become the only country in the world to have entered the railway internal-combustion Era.

If this advantage is maintained, East Africa’s railway industry can at least live off this stock of accumulated strength for several decades, since even in the previous life, before the Era of high-speed rail, internal-combustion locomotives held the dominant position.

Of course, steam locomotives and internal-combustion locomotives are not entirely the same; East Africa definitely counts as a major power in internal-combustion locomotive manufacturing but can only rank among the front-runners in the field of steam locomotives. Steam locomotives still occupy a certain market share in East Africa and have not been completely replaced, so the old and new forces on East African railways have not yet completed a thorough handover.

Internal-combustion locomotives and steam locomotives also cannot be simply lumped together for comparison; in a certain sense they are actually two different things. Only when other countries’ railways begin shifting toward the internal-combustion Era will East Africa’s status as a railway manufacturing great power be even more clearly established.

The same holds true in sectors such as electric power. The electric power industry covers a wide range of fields. Before the arrival of the electric Era there were no corresponding reference points—for instance, the earliest primary use of electricity was merely for lighting, corresponding to the role played by gas lamps or candles at the time. But as electric power developed, it also began to play the role of coal as an energy source for industrial production, and with the advance of electrification in East Africa, electricity has come to be widely applied in household electrical appliances.

Overall, electricity is an energy source, but obviously different from coal, natural gas, and petroleum. Yet with the development of the electric power industry, its tremendous power is already in no way inferior to coal, that most important basic energy source of the First Industrial Revolution.

And in East Africa, with the development of the automobile industry, the petroleum industry has also begun to mature, and its scale is rapidly climbing.

This has led to a situation in which coal, petroleum, and electric power are developing in parallel in East Africa’s energy sector, and, owing to the promotion by the East African Government, the natural gas industry is also being rapidly rolled out, becoming the fourth-largest energy source, second only to the first three.

”Emerging industries, over the course of the two Five-Year Plans, have already undergone a metamorphosis and become the main force in our country’s industry and economy. We should no longer regard these industries with outdated eyes. These emerging industries have developed toward maturity and are fully capable of assuming the role of the mainstay in national industrial development.”

”The maturation of emerging industries has enabled many of our industrial departments to achieve overtaking on the curve. During the Second Five-Year Plan, driven by these emerging industries, the value of our industrial exports has increased significantly, allowing us to achieve differentiated competition with other countries’ industrial products and turning them into the flagship products of East Africa’s industrial exports.”

”This is something traditional industries cannot accomplish. In many traditional industries we have only achieved a transition from nothing to something, but not from weak to strong. Moreover, to pursue and overtake other countries in traditional industries requires solid accumulation—not only the投入 of resources, but also time costs. Time costs are clearly a disadvantage for us in East Africa. As a new rising country, we began developing a full century later than Europe and America, so in many traditional industrial fields it is impossible for us to overtake those old-established powers within just a few decades.”

”However, with the springing-up effect of East Africa’s emerging industries during the Second Five-Year Plan, we seem to have found a way to break the traditional industrial market monopoly of Europe and America. This is clearly reflected in sectors such as railway and shipbuilding.”

Railway and shipbuilding had already been quite prominent during the First Industrial Revolution, so as East Africa’s own railway and shipbuilding industries developed, the industrial metamorphosis under the broader framework of East Africa’s industrial upgrading became more readily apparent.

At least the industrial transformation in the railway sector has already been mentioned, and in fact the situation in shipbuilding is similar, although East Africa is not especially outstanding in the shipbuilding field.

In the mid to late period of the previous century, with the birth of the Ironclad Ship, the shipbuilding industry experienced a tremendous transformation, shifting from the age of sail toward the steam Era and the steel Era.

Of course, this transformation in shipbuilding first appeared in Europe and America, but East Africa can be said to have caught the rising tide. Under such a turn of events, if traditional shipbuilding powers from the age of sail did not actively transform, they risked being replaced. However, the vast majority of traditional powers from the sail Era did successfully complete their transformation.

Even so, the revolution in shipbuilding provided many countries with a new opportunity to catch up, among which East Africa, Germany, and Japan are typical examples.

Germany’s performance among them has been the best. Relying on its strong domestic industrial base, it rapidly became a new global center of shipbuilding and facilitated the rapid development of its own navy.

Because of inherent disadvantages, East Africa and Japan have not been able to attain achievements as brilliant as Germany’s, but they have still stood out among the nations of the world. East Africa in particular, by virtue of its national scale, has already achieved a qualitative leap in shipbuilding.