Education

The Austrian merchants planned to bring East African students to Austria as workers. This contrast was not strange at all, much like how many Filipino maids in a previous life held university degrees. East Africa itself had promoted compulsory education at the middle-school level, but it could not absorb them all locally, and many still had to work in agriculture. So becoming industrial workers in Austria was also a decent choice.

Middle-school students like those in East Africa, who had qualifications, a certain degree of cultural literacy, and, most importantly, spoke German, could become high-quality industrial workers with only a little training. Moreover, they would certainly cost less than Austrian locals with equivalent educational qualifications, offering excellent value for money. So this was perfectly reasonable.

"Mayor Kranis, may I ask whether every city in East Africa, like Mogadishu, has achieved universal compulsory education at this level?" The Austrian merchant Terrell still found it hard to believe that East Africa had the ability to implement compulsory middle-school education nationwide.

No matter how small Mogadishu city was, it was still the provincial capital of an East African province. Its status was therefore vastly different from that of an ordinary city, so having a middle school was nothing unusual.

Mogadishu city's urban population was less than ten thousand. It truly was a small city, so one middle school was enough.

Meanwhile, the first baby boom in eastern East Africa around ten years earlier would, in another four or five years, bring that new generation to middle-school age. By then, the number of East African middle-school students would experience another qualitative leap.

Mogadishu city would not be affected, however, because East Africa had annexed and developed Northern Province far later than its eastern regions. The inland and southern regions were even later, somewhat later