Eli5 Why didn’t the Ottoman Empire expand more into Africa?
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Europeans, and by extension middle-eastern and Anatolian people, had lots of trouble surviving in Africa below the Sahara desert until the XIX century.
Tropical diseases and native population hostility made almost impossible for them to penetrate in Tropical africa. The Colony of the Cape was an exception because it has temperate weather. Smaller islands were also colonised because were either uninhabited or with very small “angry” natives.
This changed in the XIX century with the improvements in medicine, warfare and the ability of European powers to mantain a colony in an hostile environment (faster ships). But by then the Ottoman empire was in decline and actually lost most of its possessions in Northern Africa
Egypt and Tripoli used to be part of the Ottoman Empire, and they are both in North Africa.
A lot changes based on the era you’re talking about. The Ottomans at their maximum territorial extent in the mid 16th century did have the eastern half or so of the North African coast and Egypt / the lower parts of the Nile and a tiny part across the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, so let’s go with that.
There are specifics like further west along the Mediterranean coast out to Morocco was tried and they at one point did have a vassal state there with a dynasty that was under Ottoman suzerainty. The dynasty succeeded that though was not having it and fought off Ottoman attempts at control as they were a formidable power of their own and were able to fight them off.
Really though it’s probably because throughout the course of the 16th century, European rivals became newly enriched with resources, land and technological innovations from mostly the New World allowing for further population growth and going into a positive feedback loop of even more maritime trade and technology which meant a massive shift in the balance of trade and the amount of material wealth and demographic size.
Expanding south into the Sahara was more trouble than it was worth. The Ottomans didn’t even conquer the interior of Arabia either. Along the coasts, the Ottomans did attempt to expand even further, but the further from Constantinople they got, the more difficult it became to exert control.
In the west, the Ottoman Empire fought against Morocco in the 1550s in the hopes of turning it into a vassal state. They fought a few inconclusive battles, but the Ottomans were ultimately unsuccessful, largely because they were also preoccupied fighting Spain for control of Oran. Ottoman hopes to conquer Morocco effectively ended after the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, as the Ottomans had lost their ability to project power to the west. Even their existing North African territories would gain more autonomy beginning in the 1600s.
To the south, the Ottomans tried to expand down the African Red Sea coast. They quickly came into conflict with the Ethiopian Empire though, and this effectively blocked Ottoman expansion toward the Indian Ocean. First, they vassalized the neighboring Adal Sultanate and invaded Ethiopia together in 1529. Ethiopia managed to hold out and, with support from Portugal, drive out the Ottoman-Adal forces in 1543. Then, the Ottomans invaded again starting in 1557, but after decades of conflict, they only managed to hold on to the port of Massawa in modern-day Eritrea. Meanwhile, Ethiopia managed to remain independent. Even within nominally Ottoman-held territory, they had little direct control beyond Egypt and a few southern Red Sea port cities. The rest of the Red Sea coast was held indirectly through local tributaries.
Without conquering Morocco or Ethiopia, the Ottomans couldn’t expand further down the coast, and their existing control over the African coasts would only weaken over time. Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and eventually Egypt would all become semi-independent by the early 1800s.
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