As the Hohenzollern Conglomerate increased its investments in North America and the Far East, its financial investment in East Africa correspondingly declined. The real reason, however, was that East Africa was still digesting the results of its previous development. Investment in East Africa was now mainly concentrated in the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone and the Northern Industrial Zone.
The Lake Malawi Industrial Zone was independently funded by the Hohenzollern Conglomerate, and its heavy industries still needed time before they could begin production.
Factory construction alone had consumed considerable time, not to mention the far larger undertaking of infrastructure development. The shores of Lake Malawi happened to be among the regions with the poorest geographic conditions in East Africa, with extensive mountainous terrain. Roads were therefore more difficult to build and had to skirt rugged landforms, greatly increasing construction costs.
Even after all that was completed, the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone would still need new immigrants to fill it. Industry required workers, yet at this stage, East Africa's overall number of immigrants was trending downward.
The number of German immigrants in particular had plummeted. Without sufficient numbers of German immigrants, the introduction of immigrants from other ethnic groups had to be handled cautiously.
In this regard, East Africa was stepping up efforts to tap Hungary's potential. After all, the Magyars of the Kingdom of Hungary accounted for only five percent of Hungary's population.
This stemmed from the peculiar ideas of the Magyar nobility. Since Hungarian nobles were everywhere, numbering more than six hundred thousand—including the newly ennobled nobles of Lombardy—the Magyar nobles easily came to regard themselves as a separate group. They expelled the lowly peasants of rural Hungary from the clan rolls and declared, "Only landowners are true Magyars!"
Nationalism was flourishing in the nineteenth century, but Hungary's nationalism was