Prufrock451 said:
Summary: most of the continent will remain American after the conquest for years to come. Liberia, Morocco, Ethiopia and South Africa are the only nations ripe for reorganization at this time. The Europeans should get back some small scraps of empire- but for the moment, they should keep their eyes firmly fixed on Berlin and let America deal with Africa.
While this is logical regarding the fact that in this time line all European countries lost all of their holdings, I deem it inplausible that the USA will garrison nearly all of Africa for a number of reasons. (These arguments of course depend on your point of view, wether you say "It's just a game" or try to make it as realistic as possible. Still, I'm not saying that my opinion is more than my opinion only.)
Generally, this war is waged on a scale that makes real-life WW2 look like child's play, because ALL of the world (except for some happy countries) are engulfed in warfare. War exhaustion of the population and the economic strain on the US will rise to incredible levels as the fighting slowly draws to a close. Assuming an eventual victory of the USA, it will be the only superpower in the world, as well as the only country with an more or less intact and self-sustaining economy. All of Europe, Africa and most of Asia will lie in ruins - the current combat zones in the south of France are devasted, for example, as will be more regions across the globe.
In effect, the USA will have to manage the whole world's recovery. A Marshall plan for Europe may well be installed, but Africa won't need one to return to pre-war economic levels because (I think) there wasn't that much of heavy fighting there. In order to get Europe and Russia back on their feet, the US will need all goods and cash reserves it can freely give away to install peaceful governments and create strong allies for the future. Africa would play a very minor role in these considerations, as possible allies there would not be very strong economy-wise and garrisons throughout Africa would demand many times the manpower of Europe, simply because of it's size. In order not to tie up too many precious ressources in regions that will most likely not repay this aid anytime soon by repaying this support or simply becoming strong and reliable allies, and not to tie up manpower that will be needed across the globe (Japan and Russia!), the USA would grant statehood to some African countries that can (or a hoped that they can) set up own, stable governments and furthermore decrease garrisoning to a level as low as possible. These remaining garrison may initially be still much larger in terms of covered area and also manpower than Europe, but would be decreased as quickly as feasible.
The only country to resume it's role in Africa would be the UK, because they were liberated first and got South Africa as a dominion, in contrast to the other African countries and regions that were colonies. But the age of colonialism is over, as well the fatigue of military conflict and their economic weakness and dependency on the USA may well forestall any European country's ambition to resurrect their African influence and holdings.
African countries would strive for independency and seek support from the USA, but would not be willing to trade their new freedom in order to become members of an artificial African Union. So the danger of new fascist countries emerging exists, but for the USA these would be mere sparks after they've extinguished a world's fire.
So, in my humble opinion, the reasons for the USA not to stay in Africa are the devasted economies around the world, it's own economy that has had it's strength sapped by years of warfare and now the need of supporting the build-up of more or less the whole world and the masses of troops any garrisoning of African countries would demand, as well as the logistical difficulties and the costs this would result in.
