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This shows up occasionally in some AHs (I'm thinking of Tony Jones' Monarchy World in particular). African colonies would obviously be of use to a Russia that sees itself as a superpower and wants to project power far overseas, not "only" in Eurasia.

However, the country is not geographically or geopolitically well placed to colonise Africa, particularly at the time of the Scramble (not long after the Russo-Turkish War, for example) and so we need to provide an important motivation. This could just be a German-style flashy operation to gain colonies for the sake of having colonies, but how about this: I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Ethiopian Church is considered close to the Russian Orthodox (no idea why, I thought they were Monophysites) so could we perhaps see Tsarist Holy Russia as the protector of Ethiopia against, e.g., the Italians?

Any other ideas on how we could get Russian colonies in Africa by 1914?
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