In this scenario, much of the eastern Middle East is in ruins, divided by war, starvation and poverty, and the Arab League is in turmoil over it’s differences, and has ceased being an effective political union. A rapidly growing sub-Saharan African population in addition to Chinese, Russian and Indian investments in Africa have managed to see the standard of living for many people across the African continent boom.
African infrastructure has grown by millions of km in terms of roads, dozens of new million person cities have sprung up, adding hundreds of new seaports and thousands of new airports across Africa. Telecommunications usage has vastly increased, as has the access to electricity, clean water and efficient farming systems.
Disease has begun to be eliminated, as millions of Africans are vaccinated each year, and the number of people dying from disease and starvation is cut tremendously. Many local conflicts have stabilized with increased counter-insurgency operations increasingly conducted by independent contingencies of African Union counter-terrorism forces, replacing UN peacekeepers and EU forces there, with the aid of Chinese and Russian training and weapons.
But the African Union has also begun to become increasingly defiant of China and Russia, which have decided it’s better to temporarily retract and devise an alternative strategy.
The EU sees this chance to re-establish it’s colonial interests in Africa, and decides to steal what China and Russia have invested by quickly establishing regime change there. The AU also looks to the EU and wants to retake back what the EU has stolen from Africa throughout centuries.
A war erupts, and the Mediterranean Sea becomes inflamed, as the EU is confident that it can use it’s naval might against a strong AU ground force but weak AU naval and air force, to push deep into North Africa, while the AU is confident it can use North Africa to bait EU troops and trap them into a massacre.