While Ernst was enjoying his inspection tour, Bella City on the shores of the Indian Ocean also welcomed new opportunities for development.
Unlike Maputo, Bella City was an entirely new city developed and built by East Africa. Yet by 1892, its pace of development had already surpassed every other East African city, including Maputo, the former capital of Mozambique. The main reason was the national policy preference East Africa had given to Bella City.
In his previous life, Africa's industry had been concentrated in northeastern South Africa, within the former Republic of the Transvaal, including major South African industrial and mining cities such as Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city, which East Africa had not yet developed, and Pretoria, now East Africa's Otto City.
Centered on Johannesburg, there were more than sixty gold mines within a radius of 240 kilometers. Located at the heart of the world's largest mining region and South Africa's economic core, Johannesburg and the many industrial and mining cities around it together accounted for roughly half of South Africa's total industrial output.
East Africa's industrial concentration, however, was located in what had been Zimbabwe in his previous life rather than in South Africa. This made Bella City's port location increasingly valued, with supporting facilities such as railways, ports, and roads rapidly following suit. Population, capital, technology, and industry all began gathering in this region.
August 17, 1893.
At the docks, the Bella City government welcomed an important group of guests who had come all the way from Germany: an inspection delegation from BASF Company, one of Germany's chemical industry giants.
BASF Company was headquartered in Ludwigshafen, across the river from Mannheim in the Duchy of Baden. Ludwigshafen had risen to prominence in the nineteenth century through the development of the chemical industry, and it formed a joint