The Black Panther Prelude tie-in comic opens with the first panel with 'North-Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo', where violence threatens to spill over the border into Wakanda. For geography and details geeks, who like their fictional countries to have real-life locations, this is great and immediately tells us that Wakanda is situated on the border of DRC and Uganda somewhere between the border with Rwanda and Lake Edward. This also seems to fit with the ecology we've seen so far in clips, and, being a fairly remote and under-inhabited part of Africa suits well the location for Wakanda.
The comic shows the reader T'Challa's first action as Black Panther ten years ago. This also happens to be the very same day Tony Stark declares himself as Iron Man. If we are to assume this comic is intended to be read in 2018, in preparation for seeing Black Panther in theatres, then we can assume that '10 years ago' is 2008, and thus that the events of the first Iron Man occurred in that year.
The years that the events in the first phase of the MCU attract a lot of debate, but the two prevailing theories are 2010 – 2012, and 2008 – 2010. With the reveal that the Battle of New York was as long as "8 years ago" (or at least seven and a half years ago) in Spider-Man Homecoming, the latter theory gained traction with some fans who cite the only official timeline in 'The Art of The Avengers' as proof that has been Marvel Studio's timeline all along. Opponents to this point to instances in Agents of SHIELD when these dates have been contradicted, but contradictions between the MCU movies and MCU TV productions have been so common it seems that they work on separate timelines (which makes sense, if you want your shows to reference movies, it's easier to assume they take place in real-time).
Given Iron Man 2 starts in May, 6 months after Stark announced "I am Iron Man", and Stark and Stane's battle took place on the 24th (Coulson sets a meeting with Potts on the 24th, the day of the battle), then we can summarise that the "I am Iron Man" press conference takes place in the last week of October – and if 2008, then sometime between October 25th and October 31st.
This is where the writers' attention to detail gave me a semi. What was happening in DRC in October 2008? The North-Kivu Campaign. Violence, specifically in the region Marvel Studios have set the MCU Wakanda. What's more, "On October 28, five rocket-propelled grenades were fired at a convoy of UN vehicles protecting a road to the territorial capital of Rutshuru, hitting two armoured personnel carriers. The APCs, which contained Indian Army troops, were relatively undamaged, though a Lieutenant Colonel and two other personnel were injured" (from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Nord-Kivu_campaign) strikingly like what is depicted in the comic.
TL;DR – The Black Panther tie-in comic takes real-world events in DRC to tell us the location of Wakanda and confirms Iron Man takes place in 2008.
