Sigmaringen was cost-effective, and East Africa was as well. East Africa's material and labor costs were inherently low, and when it had previously built railways, it had taken advantage of a large portion of the world's surplus steel production capacity during the 1873 economic crisis for free.
Now, steel mills of every size across East Africa had begun production, and meeting its own needs was no longer a problem. As for labor costs, building this railway was utterly insignificant compared with the current water conservancy projects.
East Africa had spent the ten years of the seventies completing the necessary arrangements for industries such as steel and railways. In these two fields, it could be said to have reached the same level as Russia. The quantity was sufficient; only the quality remained rather crude.
In East Africa, getting things done required money on one hand and the allocation of materials on the other. With annual steel production capacity reaching a million tons, the two East African state-owned enterprises, East African Steel and East African Railway, had both become trust-like enterprises in their respective fields.
During the same period, Britain and the United States produced more than 1.3 million tons of steel. This was below their pre-crisis level, as the 1873 economic crisis had caused at least one-third of the two countries' steel enterprises to go bankrupt, while their economies remained in a prolonged slump.
East Africa, by contrast, had undergone wild growth throughout the seventies. It had purchased large numbers of bankrupt European and American steel enterprises and production machines. Through its nationwide system and Ernst's understanding of East Africa's mineral resources, East Africa's steel enterprises grew rapidly and secured an important share of the global market.
The most direct beneficiaries were East Africa's military-industrial and railway enterprises. Demand for steel