For now, East Africa was developing at a tremendous pace. Though this was the age of industrialization, East Africa's industrial development was almost a complete blank slate.
Yet East Africa's own conditions were far from ideal. Before the East African colony was developed, the overwhelming majority of the region remained in a primitive hunting civilization.
Its vast lands had gone undeveloped and unused. The only entity that could be considered a modern state, the Sultanate of Zanzibar, relied primarily on the slave trade on the mainland as well.
For the East African colony to bring the region into an agricultural society was already an extraordinary achievement.
Agriculture was East Africa's foundation. Even in Ernst's previous life, East Africa had been one of Africa's rare agricultural regions, basically capable of self-sufficiency. Tanzania and the countries around the Great Lakes Region were major agricultural nations in Africa.
Of course, compared with being an agricultural nation, East African countries would certainly have preferred to be resource nations. Yet judging from East Africa's development in his previous life, it was among the more economically backward regions in all of Africa.
This was because East Africa's resource endowment was not particularly outstanding within Africa. Of course, that had its benefits as well: compared with other regions of Africa in his previous life, East Africa saw fewer conflicts and wars, and society as a whole was relatively stable.
Of course, being unremarkable did not mean lacking resources. Rather, East Africa lacked the major mineral resources needed for industrialization, such as coal, iron, and petroleum. These mineral resources, demanded in enormous quantities and used everywhere, were the foundations of industrialization.
Take diamonds, for example—the resource Africa had been most famous for in the world and produced in the greatest quantities in Ernst's previous life. As a luxury