In fact, the Sahara Railway was a project that could be fully realized. At the very least, Ernst knew this clearly. After all, in his previous life, the railways of Egypt and Sudan had been connected, while in this timeline, East Africa had long since extended its railways to Jezira City. As long as Egypt and Britain were dealt with, there would be no obstacle at all to building this railway.
Connecting to the Mediterranean Sea through Egypt presented the lowest difficulty, entirely thanks to the Nile River. If another region were chosen instead, such as Libya, both the difficulty and the economic returns would make East Africa shrink back.
Not only was the distance longer, but the climate was harsher, and there was no densely populated region like the Nile River banks to recover the costs.
Of course, it would be another matter if mineral resources were involved. There were precedents for this. In his previous life, Mauritania had built a railway deep into the heart of the Sahara Desert to exploit its iron ore resources.
Thus, Ernst did not completely rule out the possibility of other routes. He said to the senior government officials, "Taking the route through Libya is not impossible either, but the prerequisite is that Libya must possess resources sufficient to move us."
"Although Libya's economy and population are basically concentrated along the northern coast, that does not mean the vast deserts in Libya's interior contain no resources."
"Libya covers more than a million square kilometers. With such a vast expanse of land, even if it is desert, it must certainly have rich mineral deposits buried beneath it."
In fact, Ernst's judgment was entirely correct. Aside from petroleum, Libya also possessed extremely abundant reserves of iron, potash, manganese, phosphate, copper, tin, sulfur, kaolin, and other