Jack of Harts

Africa approached the Western Alliance with a plan once the Great Space Race began in earnest. The Western powers had been looking to build a space elevator for years, but lacked major economic, population, and production hubs that could support one near the equator. Africa happened to have all three at Port Harcourt. Africa officially joined the Western Alliance as an equal member state and Alliance money built the Port Harcourt Elevator. Africa road that elevator to the stars and brought back the riches of space to their continent. And even as Earth built more elevators, they expanded the Port Harcourt Elevator with more and more strands and support infrastructure. Even centuries later, it remained the largest orbital elevator operating on Earth and beyond.

The Second Great Depression nearly destroyed Africa. The Western powers had kept the Islamic Brotherhoods largely contained, but that ended when they turned to their own concerns. The Islamic Brotherhoods burned Africa to the ground. Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa formed the backbone of the resistance that drove the Brotherhoods out in several bloody campaigns. The Egyptian campaign proved the worst and bloodiest, culminating in the use of nuclear weapons. The vast majority failed to detonate and even Cairo rebelled against the Brotherhood’s excesses. Caught between unflinching armies and vengeful citizens, the Brotherhood forces could not escape and Africa granted them no mercy.

The AI Council actually went to the Moon, Mars, and beyond before the rest of humanity did. Not needing life support systems to survive tends to make designing long-range spacecraft much easier. They colonized Venus and then the outer system long before biological humans followed them using laser-powered solar sails that flung microchip spacecraft towards their destinations, where they quickly began building more of themselves. Powerful lasers could even accelerate them up to significant percentages of the speed of light, and they were first Earth explorers to arrive in Alpha Centauri. By the time the rest of humanity arrived on their hyperspace-capable colony ships, the AI Council welcomed them from every rock in the system.