So I've always been interested in African history and how Africa could have plausibly developed better than it did in OTL. This is a general framework for a timeline I'm considering making so feedback on these ideas is appreciated!
My POD is during the second Punic War. The pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt realizes that a victorious Rome is likely to become a threat to Egypt and allies with Carthage during the second Punic War to successfully destroy Rome.
After that, Egypt starts trading with Nubians and the proto-Axumite kingdom, exchanging crops, culture, ideas, and technologies. Carthage starts exploring the African coast and the Sahara and starts trading with West African people. This eventually brings about the rise of the Sahelian kingdoms several centuries before they came into existence in OTL. Axum can then start trading with the Sahelian kingdoms.
Axum and Egypt are both trading with India and start exploring the East African coast. This would lead to the rise of city-states analogous to the ones of the Swahili coast while also helping to create a trade network that connected North Africa to East and Western Africa. Of course these societies are going to to expand, trade, and influence other communities. These various complex societies then bounce off each other and the larger Eurasian world while creating countless butterflies of their own.
So my ending question is this: is what I proposed too wankish or is it fairly plausible?