I doubt this fits with your timeline, but what came to my mind was the following. Bear in mind it reflects my bias towards orphaned projects.
1. Mid '50s, Carthage wants to develop some local air production. My candidate: the FFA P-16 from Switzerland. By all reports an excellent design, looking for a home. It gives Carthage a nice little STOL attack and CAS aircraft with some fighter capability built in. And experience building a transonic fighter.
2. Early 60's, snap up the HA-300 before Egypt. Fund the Brandner engine, team up with India on the engine, and enter into an agreement to co-produce the HF-24 Marut and the HA-300 in both nations. By 1970 you (and India) have an excellent dogfighter and a useful fighter bomber, since the Marut with the Brandner engine can meet its designed performance goals. Messerschmidt goes back to Germany, but Brandner continues developing his family of engines, and Kurt Tank continues working on follow on versions of the Marut, culminating in the HF-73, which looks a bit like an F-17/18 equivalent.
This is also the time to set up an aeronautical engineering campus, or more specifically two, for future cooperation with India. Ideally this would lead to something like Embraer, with designs for at first simple and then later more complex and advanced commercial designs.
3. It would be good to have a long range strike option, especially since Carthage has so much coast-line. The F-111F* is going out of production in 1976, perhaps an opportunity to jump in and move the line to Carthage? And if it's there anyway, how about the FB-111H? Okay, that's a definite reach. Stick to the F, and maybe work on improved avionics later.
4. With the low end covered and a high end strike aircraft, perhaps a high end fighter? The Mirage 4000 shows up at the end of the decade, and with Dassault distracted by the 2000 and a little later the Rafale program, local production across the Med might be sensible.
5. You really do have a lot of coast-line, maybe a couple of carriers in the Spanish or Italian vein would make sense. Locally produced AV-8Bs seem like a good idea, and you have plenty of experience now.
6. By this point, with experience building and maintaining both simpler and advanced aircraft, and engineers educated both abroad and at home, independent combat aircraft design, or co-design with your old pal India, beckons. Hopefully your commercial production has managed to make carve out an Embraer sized market share.
*I consider the F-111F an orphaned project. They finally got the Aardvark right, and instead of producing several hundred over the next decade promptly ended production.
