1. Number of dependencies alone doesn't mean much, especially that Rust's dependencies tend to be much smaller than typical C deps (Cargo's ease of use and zero overhead of static linking encourages fine-grained modularity while hassle and overhead of C shared libraries encourages big libraries). So saying there are more dependencies in Rust/Cargo is like complaining that a pizza has been cut into 12 slices instead of 4 slices, regardless of the size of the pizza.

2. Cargo makes all transitive dependencies very visible (including build-time dependencies), while other solutions don't. That doesn't mean other dependencies don't have their own dependencies: https://wiki.alopex.li/LetsBeRealAboutDependencies