Is it worth hanging onto your african land as a European Power?

[Space]

Im kind of a rookie to hoi4 and im wondering what the point is of defending your african land, as Italy for example. There are hardly any resources as far as I can tell and you can hardly build anything there, and if it is worth keeping - whats the best way to defend it due to it being so large?

[🎀Hara🎀]

NO the best think you can do is release them as puppets, my main tactic as italy is to take ethiopia and pupped them, if you do that and send them 20% of your guns by 1940 they should have around 700k troops just sitting there and they can usualy take all of south and central africa.

also if you release colonies as puppets they can use their focus trees to get factories and infastructure faster than you would be able to build it for them

[|H|H| Fr3ddi3]

To an extent yes, but strictly speaking no.

The only part of Africa that has strategic importance to both sides is North Africa, Specifically Gibraltar / Morroco and the Suez Canal.

To the Axis it's all about securing the med preventing naval invasions on mainland europe which free's up units to use elsewhere. To the Allies it's about keeping the Med open so you have various invasion options along southern Europe which divides the Axis forces and also provides fast travel to the Pacific theatre when dealing with Japan shaving months of travel time off.

East Africa is not worth defending as the Axis but it is useful to attack the Suez from, but It is important for the Allies to kick the Axis out of East Africa to keep the Suez Safe. Holding onto East Africa just for the sake of it is absolutely not worth it.

Africa, is otherwise a pointless distraction as it was in the war. It does have resources but they are of limited use to both sides till much later in the war.

A tactic I employ as Italy, is making Ethiopia a puppet, but keeping them neutral in the war, The allies will waste units camping them out making it easier for you to fight elsewhere. If the Allies do forget to defend against Ethiopia and Ethiopia has alot of units, then calling them to the fight is a good offensive distraction, capable of taking a lot of Africa on their own pulling more allied units into Africa and away from the fights that matter.

[251515125]

Release Libya and Ethiopia as puppets. All you need after that is the Suez and Gibraltar.