Although East Africa's railway construction had slowed, the East African government still placed railways first in the transportation sector every time, fully demonstrating the importance of railways to the East African domestic economy.
Although Russia had previously been described as highly dependent on railways, in reality East Africa and the United States were no less so, and East Africa and the United States had done even better than Russia in railway construction.
Aside from factors such as Russia's lack of quality access to the sea and its relatively harsh climate, Russia, East Africa, and the United States all faced an important problem: their domestic rivers were in poor condition. This meant that railways had to occupy an important position in the economic development of all three countries.
The main problem for the United States and Russia lay in the direction of their rivers. Although the United States had the Mississippi River, a "golden waterway," which flowed through the Central Plains and emptied into the Caribbean Sea, linking inland and coastal economies, America's economic center of gravity lay along the eastern coast and in the Great Lakes region. Only if the Mississippi River ran east to west and emptied into the East Coast could it truly provide an enormous boost to the American economy.
Russia was even more so. Its major rivers basically ran north to south, and were affected by falling winter temperatures and frozen river surfaces. Yet Russian territory stretched long and narrow from east to west, which was why the Russian government had led the construction of the Siberian Railway to connect the country's eastern and western regions.
East Africa's river conditions were even more complicated. Compared with the United States and Russia, East Africa's Congo River and Zambezi River ran east to west, emptying into the Indian