In 1929, East Africa's urbanization rate corresponded to the rapid development of its cities. Fourteen cities had urban populations exceeding one million, and one city had surpassed two million.
The first East African city to exceed two million people was Mombasa. With the construction of its financial market and the inflow of capital from along the Indian Ocean coast, Mombasa had entered the fast lane of development in recent years. It formally surpassed Dar es Salaam and took the throne as East Africa's largest city.
Among the newly minted million-person cities, Rhine City, Kampala City, Tete City, and Maputo City deserved particular attention.
Dong Yu, director of the Bureau of Statistics, said, "Rhine City is the imperial capital and one of the twin-core transportation hub cities in central East Africa. Coupled with its advantages in administrative, scientific and technological, financial, educational, medical, and other public resources, its powerful rise is hardly surprising. In recent years, East Africa's tertiary sector has developed relatively rapidly, and Rhine City is one of its more typical representative cities."
"Correspondingly, New Frankfurt City has taken on the main burden of secondary industry, logistics, and transportation. In 1929, New Frankfurt City's population also reached 1.67 million. Rhine City and New Frankfurt City together had a population approaching three million; with Kabwe added in, it exceeded three million."
Compared with the capitals of most countries of the same era, Rhine City was rather unique. Its most prominent feature was that it had relatively little industry.
London in Britain, Paris in France, Berlin in Germany, Moscow in the Soviet Union, and so on all concentrated vast amounts of industry. The industry in these national capitals was even stronger than the total industry of many backward small countries.
East Africa's capital, by contrast, had distributed functions such as industry