East Africa's actions in Mindanao demonstrated its determination to explore the oceans. Correspondingly, in 1897, East Africa newly established twenty-seven large shipbuilding and repair enterprises. As its territory expanded, the number of usable ports in East Africa also increased substantially. These ports included those in the homeland as well as overseas colonies, with the homeland's ports mainly concentrated in the south and west.
At the same time, territorial expansion also brought an increase in East Africa's inland waterway mileage, and inland shipping ports grew rapidly as well. Especially under East Africa's ambitious East African Grand Canal plan, the prospects for inland shipping became even broader.
Meanwhile, overseas territories such as the Lanfang Overseas Province, the Southern Ryukyu Islands, the Northern Kingdom of Hawaii, Balabac Island, and Mindanao also provided East Africa's ocean-going strategy with a great number of excellent ports.
Among them, as East Africa incorporated Mindanao, Balabac Island's important role was also brought into relief, as it linked the Mindanao colony with the Lanfang Overseas Province.
"At present, our homeland has confirmed and begun construction on a total of twenty-five key ports. They are concentrated in the east, while there are relatively few ports in the west. However, every developed port has good conditions of its own, and the cities hosting these twenty-five ports basically correspond to the more economically developed coastal areas," Ernst said to the government officials.
Although East Africa's coastline was relatively straight and lacked excellent natural harbors, the number of seaports it had built, developed, and put to use had already exceeded forty. These forty-odd ports basically bore the burden of East Africa's foreign trade nationwide, and the more important twenty-five were naturally those East Africa valued most.
In contrast were inland waterway ports. The number of East Africa's river ports had already surpassed two