Cyber Warfare and the New World Order

The New Colonizer of Africa

Wang Ma was the Chinese Ambassador to the African Confederation; over time, he had become perhaps the most important man on the continent. For nearly four decades, China had been investing heavily into Africa and, in particular, South and East Africa. They had invested in developing industrial ports, heavy rail networks, international airports and other major infrastructure projects. During the 2020s, while the rest of the world was suffering a global depression and food shortages, the Chinese government had been working with their African partners to develop industrial-sized farms and an intricate water system that turned large swaths of previously unusable land into fertile farmlands for commercial farmers.

The Chinese began to cultivate leaders and political parties over the course of several decades, ensuring there were always political leaders and parties that were sympathetic and friendly to Chinese policies and initiatives. The Chinese also encouraged their own citizens to emigrate to the African nations and removed any limits on the number of children a Chinese family could have if they relocated to an African country. After several decades, this had led to a massive Chinese diaspora in multiple African nations; they began to exert immense political and economic sway over these countries.

When World War III broke out, many of these African nations chose to remain neutral. However, once it appeared that America was going to lose, many of these nations chose to join China in declaring war against America. Led by handpicked leaders in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Madagascar and Zimbabwe, the African Confederation had been born in March of 2041. With assistance from the PLA, the “African Confed” (as it was being called) began a conquest of their neighbors, with the intent of uniting Africa under one banner, one policy.

While Europe and America were fighting for their very survival against the Islamic Republic, the Russian Federation, and the People’s Republic of China, the African Confed had been conquering one African nation after another. By the end of 2041, the nations of Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo had fallen. Angola had willingly joined the Confederation and provided the Chinese Navy with South Atlantic naval ports.

By the summer of 2042, when the war in Europe had started to turn against the Russians and the Chinese had lost control of the Pacific, the African Confederation had conquered all of Central Africa and half of Nigeria. The brunt of the fighting taking place on the continent now centered around parts of Cameroon and Nigeria as the Americans and the South American Multination Force began to provide military assistance to the fledgling governments, trying to do their best to fight against this new force.

Ambassador Wang Ma’s purpose in Africa was simple — assist the African Confed in winning their war and in developing a sustainable long-term government and economy that could continue to support and sustain Chinese global dominance. Though Wang had been born in mainland China, he had spent most of his life in Africa. His father was a prominent businessman and had earned billions in mining and railroads; he had helped stitch Africa together through hundreds of thousands of miles of train tracks and brought enormous economic prosperity to the continent by linking their vital mineral resources with the very hungry Chinese manufacturers who would purchase those goods. The railroads he had helped to build also linked the countries together, growing the economies and bringing the people of the continent together. His legacy had helped to cement China as the nation who had brought Africa into the 21^st century and beyond.

His son, Wang Ma, not only inherited his father’s wealth, political connections and business, he was later appointed the Ambassador to South Africa and then the African Confederation. He was well liked and trusted by nearly every leader and businessman on the continent, and was considered to be an African, even if he was Chinese.

America, on the other hand, had paid little attention to Africa during the past thirty years, focusing instead on internal domestic problems and their continued antagonistic relationships with the Middle East, Russia and China. This had enabled the Chinese to cultivate a multi-decade long relationship with the current and future leaders of the continent.

Ma’s directive from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) ruling committee was simple — guide the African Confederation in their conquest, but prepare them to support China in the war against the Americans if needed. Shortly after the loss of the PLAN fleet near Southern California and Hawaii, it became apparent that Africa would need to play a larger role in the Chinese plans for global dominance. America was slowly taking back control of the Pacific; that much was apparent. What the PRC needed to do, was solidify their hold in Africa and southeast Asia and ensure that no matter what happened, they would be too big for the Americans to conquer.

Wang Ma had worked with the President of the African Confederation to sign a military pact with China, and began construction of a military industrial complex that could support and sustain a modern military. The military forces the Confederation had were merely adequate for the regional conquest they had been undertaking. They were used to fighting other poorly trained and equipped armies. The Allies, however, were anything but poorly trained and equipped.

Ambassador Ma worked with his African counterparts to identify young men and women who could be trained as drone pilots to form the backbone of a new Air Force. Drone aircraft were cheap and easy to manufacture in comparison to an advanced fifth generation stealth fighter. It was also easier to train someone how to operate a drone than a plane. Ma’s counterpart, General Ming, had 100 drone pilot instructors brought to Africa, and they immediately began an aggressive program of training new drone pilots.

Four new military airbases were built, an intense ten-week drone pilot training school was constructed, and the new crop of drone pilots began to be trained. Multiple state-of-the-art 3D printing fabrication facilities were built across the confederation, and the construction of thousands of fighter/bomber drones had begun. The challenge Ma and General Ming faced was finding enough skilled workers who could man these advanced manufacturing plants and repair the machines to keep them operational. Most of 2041 and 2042 was spent training a workforce that could handle these tasks and develop a nucleus of skilled workers who could, in turn, train more people.

President Aliko Dangote had been the leader of the African Congressional Congress during the 2020s, and was the instrumental leader who advocated for the creation of the African Confederation. He had championed this cause for nearly twenty years, advocating for a stronger, unified Africa. He believed the 21^st century was going to be the century of Africa, the rise of the continent from its past colonialization and resource pillaging from the West. With aid from the Chinese, Dangote built a grassroots network across many countries, garnering support from every political circle and walk of life he could. He was the young revolutionary leader the continent needed.

When the formation of the African Confederation began to take shape, he was nominated to become the leader of the movement, and later put forward as the nation’s figurehead. He had worked closely with the leaders of China and Russia in developing the needed foundations of a successful government and country. They needed a functioning economy and the ability to feed their own people. Through a myriad of trade agreements, the African Confederation became a major global food producer. This provided the needed counterbalance to the American-led Grain Consortium, which had formed under President Stein.

President Dangote admired President Stein’s rise to power and what he was doing in America. In many ways, Dangote wanted to emulate what he saw Stein doing in America, but he also had to be cautious. Dangote owed his rise to power and the formation of the African Confederation to the Chinese, not the Americans. It was China that had poured hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure and education across Africa, not the Americans. It was China who had provided them with the engineers they needed to bring stable and renewable power sources to Africa. Who had established a manufacturing base and increased food production using genetically modified crops and dozens of irrigation projects? China.

Dangote had done what he could to keep the Confederation’s focus on Africa and not the global war being waged against the major superpowers. He was of the mind that Africa would work with whomever won, but that was not to be the case. His Chinese leaders had other plans in mind. While he wanted to focus on uniting Africa under one banner, his Chinese bosses wanted him to train a military force that would be used against the Americans. He had reluctantly agreed and authorized the creation of a new International Force that would serve with the Chinese wherever they deemed necessary.

The Chinese had nearly 260,000 soldiers stationed in the African countries, spread across numerous provinces. They had assisted Dangote’s forces in the capture of many countries and in the institution of law and order. Now, they were being used as military trainers and advisors to train the nearly 850,000-man army he had been told to draft. Most of the people being drafted into the army could barely read and write their name. The Chinese did not seem to care. They had established a dozen training bases, and began to filter the recruits through their training program. By the end of 2041, the PLA had trained 330,000 soldiers. As they completed training, they were quickly moved to the north of the country to fight with other PLA soldiers who were moving in to capture the Horn of Africa and some of the other provinces from the now-defeated Islamic Republic. Clashes with American and Israeli soldiers were becoming more common, but no direct military engagements between the armies had yet been fought. The PLA was more concerned with grabbing land and consolidating their gains.

What concerned Dangote was the treatment of the civilians in the former IR provinces. He knew the PLA could be brutal when they needed to be, but if the rumors were true, then he was horrified. The PLA had been eliminating nearly every civilian in Somalia and South Sudan. Rather than feed the people they were conquering, the Chinese began a process of systematically killing the population off. While China may have been allied with the Islamic Republic, they did not like or agree with the Islamic faith. The People’s Republic of China had been brutal in their treatment of their own Muslims, and now that they were conquering former Muslim lands, they were doing whatever they could to eradicate the religion and the people who practiced it.

President Dangote had already brought the issue up to Ambassador Wa once, and he was quickly told not to concern himself with what the PLA was doing and to focus internally on winning the war with Cameroon and Nigeria. Dangote was not comfortable with how the Chinese were using his soldiers and was becoming less content with the PLA’s ever-increasing control of his own military. His best officers were being transferred into the International Force that the PLA was training at an alarming rate. Secretly, he feared the Chinese would depose him and just assume control of Africa once he had done the hard task of unifying the continent.

Up until that point, the Americans had left the African Confederation alone. They had no real diplomatic ties with the country, and were solely focused on the wars in Europe and on their own soil. However, once the PLAN lost the majority of their naval forces near California and Hawaii, Dangote began to wonder how long the Americans would stay away from Africa. Just when it seemed they had been defeated, they rose from the ashes and squashed their enemy. Would they repeat this history in Africa?