A Presidency focused on Human Rights protection, RFK perhaps, could move into a destabilized Congo to try and help and then get quagmired into a very long ordeal?
I can't see America caring enough about Africa to send actual American troops into a Vietnam-style conflict there. More likely they'd just do what they did IOTL, prop up corrupt, sociopathic puppets and proxy armies.
Have South Africa collapse into a state of civil war in the 1980s. With no central govt. the United States works with local forces (i.e. moderate ANC+whites) to establish a national unity govt. on the southern tip of the African continent. ANC hardliners, the SACP, and the white supremacitst fight back in a tri-lateral civil war.
Angola, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique (even perhaps Namibia) serve as communist bases.
Americans cared about Asia due to the Domino Theory.Why did the Americans care enough about Asia to send troops there?
I don't see Africa being that much different.
Could we have a POD where US tropps get involved in Angola? US troops fighting alongside troops from apartheid South Africa wouldn't fly politically, but if we get rid of SA (or have an SA that is more politcially palatable) that could work. But having no apartheid in SA could easily butterfly away the Angolan war.
The problem with that is that the main reason the US has for propping up SA, strategic resources found in industrial quantities only there and in the USSR. The Cape is not where those resources are located, mostly they are located inland in Transvaal, with others in Orange Free State and Natal. US won't settle for a Cape State, doing so gives the USSR far too much leveragePerhaps with South Africa divided into a US-backed Cape State (comprised of Northern Cape, Western Cape and parts of Eastern Cape) with the rest largely falling into anarchy or under the rule of warlords from various hardliner groups (who along with fighting each other also target or forcibly recruit vulnerable groups within South Africa such as the Coloureds, Asians and Indians, etc that seek to escape to the US-backed Cape State).
Have always envisioned an ATL scenario where a nationalist China also finds itself involved in a similar conflict.