AHC: Large Sub-Saharan African Power

kernals12

Banned
Is there a way that a large amount of Sub-Saharan Africa could be unified under a single power? I would hope this would butterfly away colonization.
 
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Is there a way that a Sub-Saharan Africa could be unified under a single power? I would hope this would butterfly away colonization.

Well, one way could be that if the Berbers of North Africa christianized sooner, they could better stand together against the Caliphate and reform faster with European help
 
Africa is bigger than the U.S., most of Europe, China, and India combined. There’s no way a polity that big can be a functional country. Even OTL the Congo’s sheer size is a contributing factor to a lot of its political instability, and it’s not even the largest African country.

Edit: I spoke of Africa as a whole, forgot that OP said Sub Saharan. But the vast majority of Africa is sub Saharan so the point about it being too big stands.
 
Besides that there were actual sub-saharan African powers in history? Mali, Axum, Songhai, the Sokoto caliphate, and others were basically great powers. But if you mean an African great power surviving to the modern day, Ethiopia or Somalia is probably your best bet, given that they have historically been pretty wealthy/powerful (even if they aren't today).

The biggest weakness of Africa (besides all the colonialism and stuff they had to endure for centuries), is that the concept of nation states never really caught on, and all great powers that survived into the 20th century were based on nation states (plus their colonial empires). Not that this is the fault of the sub-saharan Africans (read Guns, Germs, and Steel for more on why they got a raw deal), but without very many coherent nation states, most African countries have to focus primarily on internal issues. And a country focused mostly on internal issues is by definition not a great power. The only real nation states in modern Africa are Egypt and Morocco. In sub-saharan Africa only Angola, Swaziland, Tanzania, and maybe one or two others have been able to form effective national states.

But other than that, the Swahili coast has a decent chance of becoming a maritime power, since they have a lot of chances to develop a common language, common identity, and economic ties (three major defining traits of a nation state). But the biggest possible sub-saharan great power is probably a unified East African state (either centered on Ethiopia, Somalia, or Zanzibar). The geography of Africa doesn't lend itself very well to forming a large unified state (large unified states can pretty much only spread along flat plains and river valleys, see also: Canada, USA, Russia, China, India, etc.). Brazil and Australia are the only real exceptions to that rule, but it took a lot of genocide of the natives to get to that point.
 
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Not way that even half of Sub-Saharan Africa could be united with any pre-colonial POD. Sub-Saharan Africa is just too diversed and large that it could be united. Seems that people have big troubles to understand how impossible project such empire owuld be. And how impossible would be that together more than one generation.
 

kernals12

Banned
Africa is bigger than the U.S., most of Europe, China, and India combined. There’s no way a polity that big can be a functional country. Even OTL the Congo’s sheer size is a contributing factor to a lot of its political instability, and it’s not even the largest African country.

Edit: I spoke of Africa as a whole, forgot that OP said Sub Saharan. But the vast majority of Africa is sub Saharan so the point about it being too big stands.
In terms of population, Africa was quite tiny before around 1970. And if you're thinking of area, I give you Russia.
 
"African unification" is an idea for the distant future, or maybe a massive colonial wank. Any earlier and it's just a sign of ignorance of African geography and history.
 
In terms of population, Africa was quite tiny before around 1970. And if you're thinking of area, I give you Russia.

Area wise Africa is also about twice as big as Russia (30 million km^2 vs 17 million km^2) so I don’t think that argument holds water. Look up the distance from Durban to Dakar and tell me how logistically those are going to be part of the same indigenous African country.

In terms of population the total population was relatively small compared to what it is today but it was hardly “tiny” on a global scale. Not to mention that this population was far from monodisperse, as West Africa has been densely populated since the Middle Ages and only grew more so since, while parts of Central Africa just started developing higher population densities. The Horn of Africa was also densely populated, and there was also important population and wealth density on the Swahili coast. The result is you have several geographically separated areas of population density, separated by areas of low population density. The conditions in that type of geography are ripe for immediate fragmentation into polities centered on those populated regions, assuming ASB watches Black panther and unites the continent for a day.

In comparison Russia’s population is concentrated mostly in the West or in a narrow West-East band. No major disconnects.

This also ignores the fact that those regions don’t have a particular reason to be in the same country. Overland intra-African trade routes didn’t significantly appear until 19th century abolition of slave trade. Before that the separate population dense regions of Africa were oriented outwards. Ethiopia would prefer to expand across the sea into Yemen to lock down Indian Ocean trade, not into malarial swamps of South Sudan.
 
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This is about Sub-Saharan Africa people, stay on track.

It would be unlikely, but I think possible though it would require alot of outside help at first. I could see the costal area being the cities along with some oasises towns and the deserts being long stretches of nothing.
 
This is about Sub-Saharan Africa people, stay on track.

It would be unlikely, but I think possible though it would require alot of outside help at first. I could see the costal area being the cities along with some oasises towns and the deserts being long stretches of nothing.

It would be still most of Africa.
 
The Kingdom of Monomotapa could fit the bill as another African great power, if they had managed to ward off Portuguese intrusions for long enough.
 
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