East African shipbuilding industry had begun to take shape in the 1870s, and its current scale of development was fairly respectable. Of course, East Africa was somewhat lopsided in this field, with military shipbuilding accounting for an obviously excessive share.
More than 60 percent of East Africa's civilian vessels were imported, including ships from Britain, Germany, France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Netherlands, and Italy.
An important reason for such an enormous share of imports lay in the congenital shortcomings of East African shipbuilding at the time. East Africa's main ports had then been concentrated along the coasts of what had been Tanzania and Kenya in the previous life, while Mozambique and Angola had not yet been incorporated into East African territory.
Under such circumstances, East Africa had a considerable shortage of ports. Coupled with the severely lagging progress of road and railway construction at the time, inland resources had been difficult to develop and utilize, so many raw materials had to be imported.
Thus, East African shipbuilding at the time truly embodied the saying, "Building was worse than buying." Moreover, lacking excellent natural harbors, East Africa naturally had no capacity to establish many shipbuilding enterprises. Even its most developed shipbuilding centers, port areas such as Bagamoyo city, could only first meet the needs of the navy. Under this broad trend, East African military shipbuilding advanced by leaps and bounds, while civilian shipbuilding lagged somewhat behind.
This also forced East Africa's civilian shipbuilding industry to shift toward Zanzibar Island and Pemba Island. These two islands were of tremendous importance to East Africa. Besides serving as maritime barriers, they possessed relatively numerous ports. Since East African shipbuilding then depended on imported raw materials, shipbuilding in both places developed at a breathtaking pace.
Of course, by the 1890s, the situation had changed. First,