Victoria Falls Worldbuilding Thread

[Whachamacallit]

In regards to Ethiopia, maybe my old attempted omake could have some ideas. I think it would be the most useful if Egypt survived the Collapse okay, though. Essentially my idea was that Ethiopia did not initially survive the collapse well at all, but Russia, needing a state to help in keeping the Bab al-Mandeb Strait open and a state to give a bit of negative pressure to Egypt (Russia would act as the carrot in this case) helped Ethiopia recover and re-annex Eritrea to keep their loyalty as well as make Ethiopia heavily reliant on Russian support to help deal with their severe case of insurrection.

But on the other hand, I kind of like EBR's idea more.

 

[uju32]

With that being said:

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-Option A for Egypt.
All the ingredients are there for them to make it out fine, from food production to local industry up to and including domestic natural gas production.
And they border Israel to boot, which is not a place Alexander wants them making common cause with. Bribes, not threats.

Furthermore, Egypt serves as a counterweight to Iranian and Turkish influence in the Med and Middle East.

They cant bind Egypt into the Russosphere without risking internal instability and fucking over Suez access.
I suspect Russia isnt popular among the common Arab after the invasion of the Middle East, especially since Egypt would have been a destination for refugees, and lacks the soft cultural power the United States used to wield.

-Sudan is in Egypt's economic orbit, or so I hear. So where Egypt goes, it goes in some degree.

-IMO, Ethiopia survives fine as a counterweight for Egypt.
Its centrifrugal tendencies are mediated by a government for which the Ethiopian Civil War's 1.4 million dead is fresh in memory; literally ended in 1991, well within living memory. Drought is a potential problem, though.

-Libya is fucked. Lots of oil and natural gas, very little water, plenty food imports.
Its caught in a tug of war between the Turks and the Egyptians, something that suits Alexander just fine as a diversion of their energies.
Plus, its a convenient staging point for Russian shenanigans into Italy. Which brings EU attention.

-Eritrea is fucked.
The authoritarian assholes who took over after the Ethiopian Civil War have been systematically running the place into the ground, and Alexander does not do charity. Nor does he have to if he literally has naval basing in Yemen and land forces in Saudi Arabia. Expect him to ignore them

-Algeria is a historically Russian ally and arms importer. And a significant oil and gas exporter.
They should do fine.

-Morocco is politically stable, partly controls the only other exit to the Med with Spain, and holds 75% of the world's phosphate reserves.
You know who'd be annoyed at instability there? Everyone, but especially Russia's allies in India and her population of a billion plus hungry mouths as well as Japan. Plus, as the EU recovers, Spain is on the other side of the Med, and any overt action has to reckon with that.

I expect them to do mostly fine there, regardless of what happens with Western Sahara.

-Tunisia is politically stable, and does not hold anything people particularly want from them.
They both export and import food. But a chunk of its economy is dependent on tourism.
They're gonna take a beating for a couple decades, but I dont expect that to go further than that.

-Western Sahara has been illegally occupied by Morocco for over fifty years now. Population isnt huge; maybe 600k in 266,000 sq km.
Illegally occupied according to the UN General Assembly, and most of Africa. The Polisario Front have Algerian support and diplomatic recognition from 46 countries, and was extended membership in the African Union.

With tacit US and French support for Morocco gone, and if the Algerians have Russian support, there are good odds it becomes independent and a de facto Algerian client state. One way or the other.
Especially because Western Sahara does have significant phosphate reserves of its own.

 

[Saint_007]

Tunisia lucked out in 2010 with its revolution, but even then there's always the threat of fringe groups, mostly Islamic radicals. There's a sense of pride among the Tunisians, and they've got a higher average level of education. It would require they get lucky in the Collapse. If they make it through, they can either partner up with Egypt as North Africa/Arab buddies, or just try to form good ties with the remaining stable North African states and stay neutral. Aside from its position right at the Strait of Sicily, they're not particularly important.

Otherwise, it endures rough times and struggles to recover. Most of their GDP is either tourism or agriculture, so the Collapse is going to make a complete mess of the economy. And unlike Egypt, Tunisia isn't sitting on a sizeable breadbasket. It has good agriculture and considerable rainfall for a North African country, true, but it'll need help to stay afloat.

Libya has water problems; most of the coast (where the majority of the population lives) feeds off an aquifer that is being drained by continuous use and suffers contamination by saltwater, meaning the Collapse could see the end of that aquifer through overuse. However, it turns out there are other sources of water, if a bit trickier to get to:

Libya: water emerges as hidden weapon

IPS:Libya's enormous aquatic reserves could potentially become a new weapon of choice if government forces opt to starve coastal cities that heavily rely on free flowing freshwater

www.theguardian.com

If Egypt wants to control Libya, this is the key. Controlling waterflow to the Libyans would ensure compliance, and it would also allow Egypt access to its own freshwater sources. The Great Man-Made River was originally regarded as a wasteful act of a mad dictator, but in the light of dwindling freshwater, a properly-built similar project could be Libya's salvation.

Of course, if Alexander wanted to stir shit up, he could always have Chad try and steal water from the aquifer or sabotage the project under the claims of the Arabs stealing more than their fair share.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Aquifer-system-of-Libya-showing-Murzuq-aquifer-7-and-other-aquifers-1-to-15_fig2_271451264

 

[Pyro Hawk]

From what I'm hearing, I'd think that Tunisia is in trouble... But they likely make it through the Collapse eventually. Also likely to be the EU's main beachhead into North Africa, because they had pre-existing friendly relations from before the Collapse to call back on. At least once the EU rebuilt itself. The rebuilt EU also has the advantage that they've got a lot of resources to throw at fixing up places in North Africa in exchange for alliances, and Tunisia has the 'advantage' that it's basically the only place that didn't collapse into a hellhole, wasn't critical to Russia's interests, and wasn't in a position to become a problem needing solving by Russia so is still around, and not under the thumb of Russia.

Meanwhile Morocco's likely been Russia-aligned for decades... But always been Russia's most dubious alliance there. Algeria benefits a lot because it gives Russia a stick to threaten Morocco whenever they start looking elsewhere. But then the EU rebuilt, and meant that Morocco now had a counterweight to balance out Russia and the Russian aligned Algeria. Likely to end up with Morocco not much better or worse than it is today, but able to play off Russia and the EU against each other over the last decade and a half. Thus meaning they're on an upward trend, provided they don't make a mistake or the geopolitical situation drastically change.

As for the Horn of Africa region... I have no idea what's happened here and what you guys have been saying doesn't clear things up much. That said, I believe Ethiopia's been a benefactor of the PRC's initiatives in Africa? So I'd say that Ethiopia did well for a while. Probably even got that hydroelectric dam they're building running, because that way they've got guaranteed power for the entire nation and elsewhere in the region without needing to worry about oil or gas. But then the PRC collapsed, at which point things started to go bad for them.

If they did build that hydroelectric dam I was talking about? Well, that's going to be something that Egypt is rather annoyed about. And Ethiopia's not going to want to lose it, which means they're probably not happy with how much assistance Russia might be giving Egypt. So that means that until the EU rebuilds, they aren't likely to get much beneficial outside aid. On the other hand, people have mentioned how the legacy of the Civil War's likely to help Ethiopia work to stay together in the wake of the Collapse. With the rest of the region collapsing around them, or becoming more hostile to them...

Well, I'll leave it up to those who know or have researched the region better than I.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Eritrea would be smaller, weaker, and more inherently dependent on Russian support, while Ethiopia would cease to be thus dependent as soon as it got its shit sorted out and dealt with its separatism problems. I would think the Russians would prefer to partner with Eritrea.

 

[Pyro Hawk]

Eritrea would be smaller, weaker, and more inherently dependent on Russian support, while Ethiopia would cease to be thus dependent as soon as it got its shit sorted out and dealt with its separatism problems. I would think the Russians would prefer to partner with Eritrea.

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Depends entirely on if Eritrea has already collapsed by the time that Russia starts reaching out for allies in the region. If they have, or are sufficiently anarchic as to make it more costly than it's worth to stabilse them, the Tsar's likely to just ensure they don't stabilise in such a way as to be a threat to merchant travel on the Red Sea whilst using his port bases in Yemen to secure the region with his navy.

 

[kelgar04]

Eritrea probably has already collapsed it's not that stable to begin with I also imagine Ethiopia tried to eat it as well.

As to Ethiopia I imagine that it changed along of a year or two during the collapse but the whole nation has probably splintered under various strong men and war lords. Though I imagine that some still hold into the name of Ethiopia in their title. Though I wonder if the old monarchy of the nation tried to make a comeback in some parts?

The Sudan though not sure but a lot of their income is gold, oil and agricultural with the collapse of the market world wide along with Russia's efforts the whole nation is under Russia's thumb , dead and gone or eaten by Egypt at least attempted to any ways.

 

[EBR]

Eritrea would be smaller, weaker, and more inherently dependent on Russian support, while Ethiopia would cease to be thus dependent as soon as it got its shit sorted out and dealt with its separatism problems. I would think the Russians would prefer to partner with Eritrea.

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That's my thinking. Russia wants its satellites dependent on it.

That said, if Eritrea collapses too quickly for the Russians to cultivate them then a fun dark horse for a Russian ally would be Somalia. The Somalis have been slowly knitting themselves back together for a while now, and the collapse of the global economy will have disproportionately less impact on people who are only peripherally involved in it. A strong Somali leader could reunify the country by force (maybe with Russian help?) if it wasn't back together already, and could take advantage of Ethiopia's collapse to nab the Somali Region. As in my Eritrea scenario the Russians would probably nudge them into occupying Djibouti.

So you have a charismatic ex-warlord Somali dictator who's spent his life trying to rebuild a strong Somalia, working with the Russians because the old pre-Collapse order was hardly good for the Somalis, and now he has to deal with this new boy Czar.

 

[uju32]

As for the Horn of Africa region... I have no idea what's happened here and what you guys have been saying doesn't clear things up much. That said, I believe Ethiopia's been a benefactor of the PRC's initiatives in Africa? So I'd say that Ethiopia did well for a while. Probably even got that hydroelectric dam they're building running, because that way they've got guaranteed power for the entire nation and elsewhere in the region without needing to worry about oil or gas. But then the PRC collapsed, at which point things started to go bad for them.

If they did build that hydroelectric dam I was talking about? Well, that's going to be something that Egypt is rather annoyed about. And Ethiopia's not going to want to lose it, which means they're probably not happy with how much assistance Russia might be giving Egypt. So that means that until the EU rebuilds, they aren't likely to get much beneficial outside aid. On the other hand, people have mentioned how the legacy of the Civil War's likely to help Ethiopia work to stay together in the wake of the Collapse. With the rest of the region collapsing around them, or becoming more hostile to them...

Well, I'll leave it up to those who know or have researched the region better than I.

Click to shrink...

Ethiopia's been working on the GERD dam since 2011, and started filling it last year.
Mostly domestic funding at that, from what I can tell, and an Italian construction company. They would have finished building it before the US collapsed, and the power generation would have served as a major engine of growth for them even after the PRC fell.

6.35GW of hydroelectric power is one hell of an electricity generation capacity.

Eritrea would be smaller, weaker, and more inherently dependent on Russian support, while Ethiopia would cease to be thus dependent as soon as it got its shit sorted out and dealt with its separatism problems. I would think the Russians would prefer to partner with Eritrea.

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True.

But Eritrea does not bring anything to the table that Russia does not already have by dint of their bases on the Arabian peninsula.
And is an economic basket case to boot of around 3 million people, so it isnt a particularly large market anyway.
From his PoV, its deadweight.

Meantime, Ethiopia controls the headwaters of the Nile, which provides a very direct lever against, and challenge to Egypt, which has a very proprietorial attitude towards the Nile.

Ethiopia has a GDP(PPP) of 272 billion dollars. Egypt has a GDP(PPP) of 1.2 trillion dollars.
This is despite their populations being roughly equivalent; Egypt is ~100 million people, and Ethiopia is 112 million. The mismatch is extreme.
So Alexander and Ethiopia can offer each other's national interests tangible benefits.

That's my thinking. Russia wants its satellites dependent on it.

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More importantly, Imperial Russia wants its satellites to be useful. Alexander is not carrying the load for any place that is not of material benefit.
Eritrea is not useful when you have Yemen/Aden after wrecking the Arabian peninsula.
And IIRC, RL Russia has naval basing rights in Sudan anyway.