Of course, the circumstances during the construction of the East African Grand Canal were vastly different from those surrounding the current implementation of the National Canal Plan.
Now, driven by economic development in the 1890s and two Five-Year Plans, East Africa had undergone earth-shaking changes in industry, transportation, and infrastructure. The national railway network alone stretched to as much as 200,000 kilometers, basically covering the entire country, supplemented by an even more developed highway network.
Tractors, automobiles, and other equipment were also being mass-produced on a large scale and could be put into infrastructure and transportation construction. At the same time, education in East Africa was advancing on all fronts, and there was no shortage of relevant professionals.
Under such circumstances, the conditions for constructing East Africa's National Canal Plan far surpassed those of the East African Grand Canal era.
In other words, East Africa had still been an agricultural nation when building the East African Grand Canal. Before the National Canal Plan was launched, however, East Africa already counted as a semi-industrialized great power. Of course, judging by the state of global industry at the beginning of the twentieth century, a semi-industrialized country was basically an industrialized one.
Therefore, implementing the National Canal Plan would not be much more difficult than building the East African Grand Canal; it might even be far easier.
Take the Erie Canal in the United States as an example. The Erie Canal ran over 500 kilometers and connected New York with the Great Lakes region. The United States built it at the beginning of the previous century, when its industrial capacity was roughly comparable to East Africa's when it built the East African Grand Canal. East Africa's industrial capacity now definitely far exceeded that of the United States at the time. Even the present-day