A "Super"power in Africa?

If all of Africa was stable, united, and had a common sense of identity, the continent could well be a superpower.
 
Why not two great powers, closely allied?

Egypt + South Africa (with some of the AH in this thread applied to them) make a formidable combination.

By themselves, both have limited power projection options. Together, they control the Suez and the Horn with Mediterranean and Indian Ocean projection. By themselves, neither have enough population and industry. Together, they can handle it.

Neither have conflicting strategic interests, both have complimentary ones (i.e. other superpowers).

I admit two great powers allied together is an odd way to get a superpower, but if we're going far enough back why not butterfly WW1 (truce in 1915), and skip WW2.

That leaves the world with a number of Great Powers, a couple Greater Powers, and eighty years to play with Egypt and South Africa pulling themselves together and picking up territory.
 
That would be me I suppose, since I think superpwer gets thrown around a lot with little thought as to what it means. A stack of cash isn't enough in my book, it has to be very rich and very robust much like the USA and USSR and a German Mitteleuropa could have been.
 
If all of Africa was stable, united, and had a common sense of identity, the continent could well be a superpower.

That is ASBs I'm afraid.

One way could perhaps be that Australia never becomes popular as a settlement destination for British settlers (for whatever reason, perhaps the first colonies fail, or France or somebody beats Britain to the punch). We'll see greater migration to South Africa.

There will still be apartheid, no doubt, but a white population that is either the majority, or forms a plularity of the population, we will probably see what happened in Aus and the American South in OTL. There will be some discrimination, but with numbers on the side of the whites, there the discrimination won't be as harsh or oppressive.

A greater British-descended population may also make a difference. For example, if one has to look at Rhodesia, although there was definitely racial discrimination, and blacks were treated badly, it could be argued that black Rhodesians were better off then black South Africans. The majority of white Rhodesians were descended from British settlers, while the majority of white South Africans are Afrikaners.

A bigger white pop in SA will also result in greater white migration, from Britain and the Continent (considering SAin OTL was a relatively popular destination anyway).

This ATL SA probably won't be a true superpower, but will definitely be a regional power, and perhaps a true Great Power, maybe on the level of OTL Brazil, India, or Germany.
 
That would be me I suppose, since I think superpwer gets thrown around a lot with little thought as to what it means. A stack of cash isn't enough in my book, it has to be very rich and very robust much like the USA and USSR and a German Mitteleuropa could have been.

Given that the original poster put quotes around the superpower bit, I don't think we really need a power that can go toe-to-toe with the US...anyhoo, the Soviet Union never was that rich and in the end turned out to not be very robust, in spite of having perhaps the world's most extensive resource base....the national "software" is at least as important as the "hardware, and probably more so.

Bruce
 
At its peak the Soviet Union had 25% of the worlds GDP, (I think the US dipped below that in the 70s) and perked along for almost 20 years after it became stagnant in most areas.

Anyway, back to the original question, I don't think Africa could foster a polity that was anything other than a regional power in the modern era.
 
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