After leaving Lomé, Colonel Tapriye's ship sailed northwest along the Gulf of Guinea, bound for Dakar. Along the way, they occasionally encountered ships traveling between East Africa and Europe. Shipping in the South Atlantic was flourishing as never before.
Since the twentieth century began, East Africa had continued to grow stronger, becoming the world's foremost economic power and greatly driving prosperity along the West African Coast.
It was not only Europe. Merchant ships from places such as South America, North America, and West Africa itself had also begun appearing along the West African Coast with increasing frequency, greatly offsetting the shipping traffic diverted after the Suez Canal was completed.
South America was the most typical example. Before the twentieth century, the South American Countries had preferred Europe for trade, with the United States as their second choice. Now, with the rise of East African industry and influence, East Africa had become the first choice for the vast majority of South American countries and merchants.
South America's economy was dominated by agricultural and mineral exports. Before the twentieth century, those goods could only be sold to industrially developed regions—that was, Europe and America—in exchange for their industrial products.
After East Africa became the world's leading industrial power, this naturally changed. East Africa's demand for agricultural products and minerals far exceeded that of Europe and America.
After all, East Africa itself was a super-market with a population exceeding two hundred million, ranking first among the world's industrial nations.
The consumption of those more than two hundred million people for all kinds of agricultural produce and other resources could surpass that of any nation in the world in total demand, even if East Africans' per-capita purchasing power was slightly lower than that of Europe and America.
Thus, South American wheat, beef, copper ore,