This was the same logic as trains in a previous life that carried coal from the north to the south, then hauled water on the return trip. Hauling water certainly could not recoup the coal train's costs, but it was still better than running back empty.
East Africa had little demand for the Far East Empire's products. Take tung oil, pig bristles, and tungsten, for example—these were currently the Far East Empire's most competitive export goods, but their output was quite limited and could hardly support freight transport on a large scale.
As an agricultural nation, the Far East Empire could next export little more than various agricultural products and handicrafts, such as tea, cotton, grain, and silk.
But to put it bluntly, East Africa could supply itself with a large share of these goods and even export them abroad.
Take tea. East Africa was one of the world's three major tea-producing regions. Even when it imported tea from the Far East, it did so only to obtain more flavors and satisfy the needs of certain groups.
There was even less need to mention cotton and grain. Not only did East Africa not import them from the Far East Empire now, it instead exported them to the Far East Empire, since many of the Far East Empire's cotton- and grain-producing regions had already fallen into enemy hands.
Silk was somewhat special compared with cotton and grain. It mainly served the mid- and high-end consumer market, and its output was likewise limited. Yet before the war, and even until Japan had completely blockaded the Far East Empire's coast, the Far East Empire had remained one of East Africa's main sources of raw silk and silk imports.
The sea outlets of the Far East Empire's two core raw silk production areas—the Yangtze