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In 1881, UK PM Gladstone sends diplomats to Egypt to try to diffuse ongoing rebellion (this has the butterfly effect of delaying or undoing the June 1882 Cairo riots of OTL); thus, Britain is already getting a diplomatic foothold in Egypt without military intervention at the time of...

Berlin Conference, 1884 -- with a stronger hand, Britain wards off German claims to Tanzania, Italian claims to Somalia, and manages to buy the Zumbo Zambia section of Mozambique from Portugal to boot

(incidentally, to compensate for their loss, Germany gets Eastern Angola and a big slice of the Congo, which is divided with France, Belgium being left with a coastal province -- but I digress...)

Cecil B Rhodes pushes rapid development of British South and East Africa, first as PM of the Cape Colony (1890-96), then as Chairman of the BSAC, which merges with the IBEAC under his term, until his death in 1907.

By this time, Cape Town is connected by rail to Nairobi and beyond; the Red Line is completed in 1913. All of this development contributes to mass immigration, with white settlers seeking "homesteads" to say nothing of the diamond and gold rushes of OTL. Add these to the white settlers (Boers, etc) already living there, as many as four million whites live in British East Africa by 1920.

At a certain point (by 1930?), Ethiopia is firmly in Britain's Sphere of Influence, with another Red Line railway running through Addis Abba.

Thoughts?
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