AHC: African Nuclear War

With a pod no earlier then 1914, have a limited atomic war occur in Africa. There needs to be at minimum 5 atomic bombs used, and the war has to remain inside the African continent. Also, one of the participants has to be a native African Power.

Also, bonus points of South Africa and Egypt are not involved.
 
The first thing that came to mind was a S.Africa vs Zimbabwe war (maybe sometime in the 70's?), with S.Africa using weapons developed with help from Israel, and Zimbabwe using one they got hold of from Russia somehow.

I'm not saying it's plausible, nor have I really thought of how or why, but it popped into my head.

Of course the most obvious way for nukes to be used in Africa involves Israel nuking the Aswan Dam.
 
Zambia or Zimbabwe vs. South Africa, or if the Soviet Union and America intervened in behalf of rival countries by giving them nukes are the most likely scenarios, unless you give a former colony economic stabillity enough to build nuclear weapons.
 

mowque

Banned
With a pod no earlier then 1914, have a limited atomic war occur in Africa. There needs to be at minimum 5 atomic bombs used, and the war has to remain inside the African continent. Also, one of the participants has to be a native African Power.

Also, bonus points of South Africa and Egypt are not involved.

All 5 can be used by one side? I got a few out of the box ideas...

1. Some type of Algerian state that stays close to France and manages to get its hands on (through whatever means) on some French nukes and uses against [insert butterflied nation] here.

2. Some type of super tense Cold War,with Russians in Angola instead of Cubans.....and so on and so forth....

3. Some type of Israel-Arab war that gets out of hand, with the Arabs being a good bit stronger/luckier.
 

Thande

Donor
The first thing that came to mind was a S.Africa vs Zimbabwe war (maybe sometime in the 70's?), with S.Africa using weapons developed with help from Israel, and Zimbabwe using one they got hold of from Russia somehow.

Er...Zimbabwe did not exist until 1980, it came into existence with South African assent, and ZANU-PF was backed by China, not the USSR.
 
Er...Zimbabwe did not exist until 1980, it came into existence with South African assent, and ZANU-PF was backed by China, not the USSR.

Well, I did say that I didn't know how plausible it was...

Anyway...

Would it be possible then to have Zimbabwe come into being earlier then, against S.African wishes? It wouldn't matter where their nukes came from, China had them by then.
 
I think the most interesting one is a Zambia-South Africa nuclear war. This thread discusses how it is possible for Zambia to get a nuke with some luck. If white rule in Rhodesia starts crumbling, a war may erupt between a black alliance (Zambia + Zimbabwean/Namibian/Angolan revolutionaries) and the white powers (Rhodesia, South Africa). If that war starts going badly for the whites, I can see the South Africans launching their nukes, and Zambia retaliating in kind.

Which side each superpower supports would be interesting. No one would want to support the apartheid South Africans, so I think they'd probably just stay neutral.

That said, Israel nuking Aswan and other sites in Egypt is probably quite a bit more likely than the Zambia-South Africa scenario.
 

Thande

Donor
Would it be possible then to have Zimbabwe come into being earlier then, against S.African wishes? It wouldn't matter where their nukes came from, China had them by then.

I'm not saying 'no', but Britain tried to force Rhodesia to accept black majority rule for 20 years and it broke successive foreign ministers and governments. So it's not likely. Basically pretty much any other former British colony in Africa is a more plausible choice for threatening South Africa with nukes.

There is a problem with native African industry of course, the Zambia thread mentioned above notwithstanding. I think the best option would be if China went even more nuts under the Gang of Four and decided to start giving nukes to any equally crazy black African be-acronym'd group that wanted them.
 
There's rumors Nigeria has thought about a nuclear weapons program in the past, and they do have a reactor, although I think it's mostly a training facility. And they've got the oil to pay for it.
 
There's rumors Nigeria has thought about a nuclear weapons program in the past, and they do have a reactor, although I think it's mostly a training facility. And they've got the oil to pay for it.

The problem there is that they have no obvious enemy to spur the development of a nuclear program. That also meas they're not likely to use a nuke if they get one. Pretty much only in South Africa and Egypt are there states with the potential to get nukes and the reasons to get/use them.
 
The problem there is that they have no obvious enemy to spur the development of a nuclear program. That also meas they're not likely to use a nuke if they get one. Pretty much only in South Africa and Egypt are there states with the potential to get nukes and the reasons to get/use them.

They fought a civil war in the 60s that might have killed as many as three million people, and there's still violence between the North and the South today. There was a church bombing over Christmas. I don't know anything to speak of about Nigerian politics, but there doesn't seem to be a shortage of enmity.

But yeah. I'd only go with them if you're absolutely determined to get the bonus points for not involving Egypt or S. Africa.
 
Libya? It had a WMD program, after all; perhaps a more determined, more collaborative, and more successful one?

Not sure where it could safely use nukes, though. Chad or Tunisia would probably see France get involved, Egypt might see the US involved. Sudan?
 
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