Almost done with this one.
…
Empire Averted
The Consolidation Wars did not end in Africa. Instead, they simply petered out, after two decades’ worth of economic sabotage, proxy rebellions, mercenary campaigns, and terrorist actions. About the only thing that wasn’t tried by the other nascent Great Powers was the wholesale invasion of the African mainland, and the only reason why that did not happen was because of the African Development Community (ADC).
The ADC had come under the control of Botswana after the collapse of South Africa in 2079, and the conquest of the Seychelles and Mauritius by the new Kingdom of Madagascar (later incorporated into the New Empire) a year later. The country had a functioning economy and effective government, and it also had the one thing the rest of Southern Africa lacked: a working space program. It was barely capable of placing kinetic energy weapons platforms in orbit — but the ADC did manage to set up a KEW network that covered most of Africa.
This network was used to keep the other Great Powers at bay. Greater China had long meddled in the continent, and North Africa and Egypt were already under the direct control of West Europe and the New Empire, respectively. The latter were tacitly left alone, but the former had too many enclaves and special districts and — most importantly — control over strategic resources to be ignored. Unfortunately, Greater China was unwilling to simply give up those puppets.
The fighting that followed was some of the most vicious of the Consolidation Wars. The threat of KEW attacks was enough to prevent Chinese troops being sent to bolster its client states’ military forces, but at first Greater China sent everything else. Fortunately for the ADC, Greater China was also more engrossed in conquering eastern Asia than in propping up African despots, which meant that the Great Power never quite supplied its clients with what they’d need to hold off the ADC, and its clients. Theoretically, Greater China could have wiped out the ADC in a day — if it was ready to lose a certain number of its core cities in the process. Greater China never came even close to making that trade.
The conflict instead became a grinding series of conflicts, which always seemed to end with ADC-supported forces winning the local battle. The ADC did not directly conquer anyone, instead always creating a local political entity that was nominally independent (and ready to join the ADC). Still, any territory that came under The ADC’s administration had the infamous Okoa simba, kuua chawa (“Save the lion, kill the lice”) policy ruthlessly applied to it. Captured warlords, kleptocrats, bandits, and particularly agents of foreign Great Powers were rounded up, given a reasonably fair trial, then promptly shot. Guerrilla activity was promptly stamped out; it was widely rumored that the ADC’s KEW network needed to be live-fired every month, and that the government considered rebel strongholds perfect targets.
In Africa, the Consolidation Wars are generally considered to have ended in 2098 with the signing of the African Protective Trade Pact. This alliance of sovereign states shared a common currency, economy, military, and ever-increasing network of orbiting KEW platforms. Eventually, the other Great Powers even conceded that the APTP was one of their number.
