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Oh this is fun. I agree with your assessment: Africa will win any battles on their technological and knowledge advantages (decryption, radar!) until Europe crushes them in logistics and develops/reverse engineers tech. However, any European occuparion of modern Africa will fail for the same reason colonialism failed: malaria
One question would be how to motivate the conflict. Let's say a portal suddenly opens up across the Med, from the strait of Gibraltar to Suez.
European powers lose contact with their African colonies and send out scouting missions.
Several of these get wiped out after they appear on primary radar.
Africa, receiving European radio over the strait and communicating mostly by cell phone, becomes situationally aware first. Unites in a blaze of anticolonialism (ok, not realistic, but needed for the military competition to be anywhere near interesting) and decides to raid Moussellini's Spain while fortifying land chokepoints.
A few right-wing Europeans in modern Africa (Ceuta?) quickly defect with laptops and cell phones. They tell European leaders about the last 80 years of tech, but it takes time for them to be believed, news takes time to propagate and 1939 Europeans don't have the knowledge or industrial base to replicate modern tech.
Africa promptly genocides all the modern Europeans left on the continent, selectively broadcasts anticolonial history into Europe.
Europe slowly unites in response. Again, this is needed more for the military stoey than realism.
Europe plans a commando raid on university libraries to get engineering knowledge.
The raid is foiled by African radar and antiship missiles as well as by coordination over cell phones (Africa faces no fog of war), but it proves that the defectors were telling the truth.
A bunch of African refugees decide to try to make the trip to 1939 Europe (perhaps they were already on the way and were just confused when they lost cell signal).
They discover that eastern Europe is much more poor than they expected: rural communities lack electricity and are still cooking on wood stoves, smoking meat in the chimney and putting tubers into root cellars for winter.
Not sure how the Russians, Hungarians, or Poles handle African refugees. Might be with communist atrocity, rich Hungarian globalism, or beliefs based on Christian scripture.
Europe gears up industrial engines for war.
The rest of the story is like World War Z: fun if you are into slow-rolling logistical tales or HFY, but the conclusion is pretty much a given.
Surprise ending: in the ground campaign Europe conquers north Africa, but faces 50%+ losses when they reach sub-Saharan Africa due to the continued existence of malaria.
Edit: Actually, smallpox in 2026 Africa is going to wipe out 20% of military age men, although it will take some time. Covid is going to wipe out 0.5% of Europe, but Europe in 1939 was younger, so it is not a strategic concern for them.
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