Planned economies were like level-clearing games. Successfully clearing a stage naturally filled one's heart with exhilaration; likewise, excessively aggressive plans could drag East Africa into a place of eternal damnation. As things stood, catching up with Germany and surpassing the United States was somewhat unrealistic for East Africa. But with an old-established nation like Britain, if East Africa worked hard enough, surpassing Britain in industry was no longer a fantasy.
As the world's hegemon, Britain should theoretically have been stronger than both the United States and Germany. In the economic sphere, Britain was indeed still ahead of Germany, but finance accounted for a large share of that. In industry alone, however, Britain was no longer a match for the United States and Germany. Therefore, from an industrial perspective, surpassing mainland Britain would not be difficult for East Africa.
"By 1904, our annual cement output had exceeded three million tons, nearly doubling from before the First Five-Year Plan. This has had an enormous impact on our construction, transportation, water conservancy, and other sectors."
The doubling of cement output was also one of the major highlights of East Africa's First Five-Year Plan. Three million tons of cement capacity was not to be underestimated. When India gained independence in Ernst's previous life, its national annual cement output had only just exceeded two million tons—and that was already in the late 1940s.
This also reflected East Africa's infrastructure-building frenzy in the first years of the twentieth century. Although East Africa's infrastructure projects in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s had not been small in scale, most projects had no need for cement—or rather, cement output could not keep up with engineering demand.
Thus, East Africa's earlier infrastructure presented the same picture across every field: towns and villages contained large numbers of rammed-earth, stone, and wooden