NOTE: This is rather liberally influenced by David bar Elias' fantastic
Zionist Uganda TL, which ranks as one of the best TLs I have ever read, and a number of other TLs and discussions that I admit I haven't remembered the names of. I hope this turns out well, and to all the people who had these ideas, thanks.
Also, I have a few people stay alive a little longer, particularly Cecil Rhodes, who has a rather large role to play in this one.
1905
At the end of the Seventh Zionist Congress, the Congress votes to accept the British East Africa plan as a place for Jews to live. Much of the hardliners in the Congress still want the people to focus on setting up their homes in Palestine - but the Ottomans are only tolerant of the Jews living in Jerusalem, and the British are privately quite keen on having the Jews live in East Africa, figuring that providing them a home and a place for them to prosper could make them quite dedicated British subjects, and also be able to civilize the wilds of East Africa.
By the end of the year, expeditions have staked out locations of what will be the city of New Akko (OOC: Yes, that's the same name as what David gave it, I can't think of a better one

) and have begun setting up a colony, originally with some 120 settlers, almost all of them from Russia and Poland. Severe anti-Semitism after the Russo-Japanese war causes what amounts to full-scale violence against Russians Jews, and as a result there is little difficulty having Jews come to the colony of East Africa. The warm climate and good soils of the area don't hurt, either.
In Durban, Natal, famed British businessman and explorer Cecil Rhodes, back from a visit to India trying to raise funding for his Cape-to-Cairo railway, is seriously injured by a locomotive boiler explosion at Port Shepstone, some 70 miles from Durban. He is pulled from the wreckage by another of the passengers on the train, a young Indian lawyer named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Rhodes and Gandhi soon strike up a strong friendship, and the Indian lawyer's perfect English and clear intellect make Rhodes' former beliefs of white supremacy look pretty ridiculous. He is still very much an English nationalist, mind you......he just thinks that the British way can be taught to any person and any person can learn it as well as any other.
Rhodes' influence, among others, is crucial to decisions to expand voting rights across the British African territories to any man who had sufficient education and intelligence, decisions which add 16,000 people to the voters' rolls. The Afrikaners object virulently to this, but just three years after the end of the Boer War, relations between them and the British are already very ugly indeed. Rhodes against tries to soothe these bitter hatreds over, but his efforts only get him so far.
Rhodes soon hears of the Jewish colony in East Africa, and pays it a visit in November. He is privately impressed with the industriousness of the few Jewish colonists, and agrees with the many locals who feel the idea of the Jews potentially becoming very loyal British subjects is valid. He immediately begins the planning of a northern section of the Cape to Cairo railway, accepting that the section through British East Africa is the largest diplomatic challenge in building the line, as well as itself somewhat of an engineering challenge.
1906
Copper is discovered in vast quantities by the British South Africa Company in their territories bordering the Belgian Congo. This provides a new economic impetus to build the Cape to Cairo rail line, along others. Many of the local tribes are soon being convinced to work on the mines, and Rhodes seeks better-trained help to help run the mines. His mind turns to two groups which he thinks may well want to come to Africa - skilled Indian laborers and the increasing numbers of Jewish arrivals in East Africa.
And those Jewish arrivals' numbers are growing, rapidly. By the end of 1906, their numbers have swelled from a few hundred to over fifteen thousand, with more arriving by the day at the port city of Mombasa. These numbers are themselves encouraging to Rhodes' plans for the Cape to Cairo railway, which he envisions allowing people to land at Alexandria in Egypt and then come down the railway to the African territories. These ideas have also come to be encouraging to the Jews, who enthusiastically back the plan. By the end of 1906, synagogues are growing not just in New Akko, but also in Kampala and other towns and cities in the colony. Some are making the journey to New Akko, but this is still a difficult task, and a result many stay in Mombasa or the areas around it. Rhodes helps fund the completion of the railway from Kampala to Mombasa, but this line is not completed until 1908.
After repeated attempts by the fearsome Massai to over-run the colonies are driven off, many of the colonial administrators are disgusted at the idea of granting concessions to the Massai. The Jews ignore the criticism and set up such a deal anyways, which allows the Massai extensive grazing rights and introduce many metal tools to them, which are helpful in their efforts. In return, the Jewish colonists are allowed to set up several large kibbutzim on the Mau Plateau, which rapidly become quite successful. The mutually-beneficial deal is seen as a watershed in relations between the natives and the settlers.
In Natal, Gandhi takes Rhodes' advice and sets up schools for the local Indians. Rhodes again funds many of these, as he is interested in the skilled workers for his growing mining operations in East Africa. Gandhi is by now one of the unquestioned leaders in Natal, regardless of the race of the individual - any racist who runs into him finds the Indian-born lawyer to be both highly intelligent and a dedicated individual, and has better command of English than the vast majority of the Afrikaners, and even some of the lesser-educated English settlers. Gandhi's idea of non-violent resistance and his dedication to fighting injustice is coined
Satyagraha. The idea also rubs off on Rhodes, who himself is seeing the results of the works of both his friend in Natal and his allies and business partners in East Africa.
1907
With the Jewish colonies in East Africa now firmly established and the anti-semitism across Western Europe only slowly ebbing, emigration to Africa by Eastern European Jews speeds up dramatically in 1907. Many steamers carry whole communities from parts of Eastern Europe to East Africa, causing the number of colonists in East Africa to grow dramatically, with the number of new arrivals growing the Jewish population to over 80,000 by the end of 1907. By now, good roads stretch from Mombasa to Kampala, and the railway has made it most of the way to Kampala. One nasty stretch from Nairobi to Kampala remains to be built, which is mostly done in 1907 and 1908. The new colonists turn out to be skilled farmers, and they also provide much of their skills to many of the natives.
The British administrators have by now pretty much shut up about the Jewish influence, through Christian missionaries are still very unahppy with the large Jewish population, and vocally say so. But the Jews are clustered on the Mau Plateau and nearer to Lake Victoria, largely avoiding the northern parts of the territory. New Akko is threatening to overtake Kampala as a major city, and the Jews have brought with them many skills and ideas, and they are genuinely good with the natives. They have also notably brought down the incidence of sleeping sickness and other diseases, which is helping everybody. Despite the deal with the Massai and their tendency to have good relations with the local Bantu tribes, there are still problems between them and the Jewish settlers.
In South Africa, Rhodes scores a major victory when he gets the Afrikaners to agree to the change of laws in the Orange Free State to allow voting rights to extended to all people, regardless of race, who have an education of at least three years in proper schools, in addition to existing qualification laws. Much of Rhodes' victory is due to Gandhi, who is a big help in convincing the Afrikaners that a person who is not white can be one of their equals. That same year, Rhodes' Cape to Cairo railway reaches all the way to the border with German East Africa, who are not terribly sympathetic to Rhodes' hopes to extend the line across their territory. Rhodes' rampant British nationalism is the primarily stumbling block. In addition this, stories of the good relations between the Africans and settlers in East Africa contrasts sharply with Germany's nasty treatment of the Herero and Namaqua tribes in German South-West Africa.
By now, Rhodes had switched tactics with the BSAC, too. He still took the big stick approach with maintaining law and order, but he hired many of the best school graduates from South African and even British, Canadian and American schools to educate the Ndebele and Shona, with the goal of integrating them into the British way of thinking. His attempts at this had some success, but were a long way from a roaring one. Still, he was getting somewhere with the tactic, and on the advice of Gandhi and many of his compatriots, began looking to get immigration from India as well as from the White Dominions of the British Empire. He also began encouraging Jews to immigrate to the territory, but the Jewish efforts still focused on East Africa.
1908
The railroad line from Kampala to Mombasa is complete and operational, though the capital of the nation has now moved to Nairobi, somewhat to the aggravation of both Mombasa residents and the Jews, who are the overwhelming majority of the Uganda territory. The rail line from Alexandria, Egypt, has by now reached all the way to Khartoum in the Sudan, and continues to move south. With the Mombasa-Kampala line completed, supplies and manpower begin moving inland from ships docking at Mombasa to Kampala, where Rhodes' railroads are now reaching most of the way to the borders with the Sudan and with German East Africa. The discovery of a major gold deposit by Jewish settlers adds to the growth.
By now, the 125,000-strong Jewish settler population is wanting its own protection, and the Jewish Defense Force is formed in response. Led by a local hero, Joseph Trumpledor, the JDF is formed largely based on British influence, and many of its officers are soon headed to Sandhurst for the best officer training in the world. With the ports bulging at the seams, Jews from Eastern Europe are now flooding into the colonies, arriving just as fast as the ships can bring them - and the seemingly endless open territory of the colony is one of the main draws. The 80,000 at the end of 1907 grows dramatically in 1908 and 1909, reaching all the way to 760,000 by the end of 1909.
Now fed up with the massive growth in Jewish influence in Africa, many of the local Christian missionaries quietly set up an armed campaign against many of the Jewish settlers. This is fairly quickly found out by the British, who are not at all impressed. The attempts to over-run many of the places settled by the Jews is responded to with vigor by the JDF, who also bribe many tribes into working with them, one of them being the Massai - who prove to be, just as the legend goes, damned good warriors, particularly when equipped with modern weapons. The JDF's success in putting down the revolts is much appreciated by the British, who allow him to build a large fort - Fort Maccabee - in the town of Gulu. The British authorities do not think terribly highly of the Jewish effort to improve the lives of the natives, thinking it wasted effort. But they do not object to it, of course.
Gandhi gets himself in trouble in the Transvaal when he accidentally enters the territory without the proper territory, along with fifteen other Indians. Rhodes steps to his friend's defense, and Smuts, well aware of Rhodes' influence, releases him after just a few days. Rhodes sets up a meeting between Smuts and Gandhi shortly thereafter, and Smuts is in no uncertain terms rather impressed with Gandhi. He would later thank Rhodes for this: "I do not know just how you and him got to know each other, but I know I am better for you introducing me to him." With Britain's planning to create a union of the four South African colonies well known by late 1908, Smuts attempts to get himself a power base with the British, as well as with Rhodes, Gandhi and the Afrikaners. He cannot get everybody to like him, but he gets many of them to.
South Africa's almost unimaginable mineral wealth, as well as its warm climate, is a major draw for people from colder Britain and other British colonies. This drives white immigration from Britain and Ireland. Similar conditions exist in German South-West and East Africa, as well as Portuguese-controlled Angola and Mozambique. News reports of the open plains and warm climates of Africa and mighty convincing to many people, and many of the European powers consider African resources a way of improving their respective economic situations. Thus, white immigration becomes a very common occurrence to Africa. This is particularly true of Jews, who are leaving Europe in droves.
1909
Following the defeat of the tribes in northern Uganda and the development of ways of supplying people from Uganda, Rhodes' railroad between Kampala and Alexandria is completed in July. By the end of the year, it has replaced the Kampala route as the primary way for the resources of East Africa to flow to the British Isles. It is also a massively-profitable enterprise. The incredible agricultural wealth now being created in Uganda and the rest of East Africa is now producing far more than what the local populations need, and as a result great trainloads of food and other delicacies, coffee being one of the biggest, are soon rumbling up the lines to Alexandria, where the rest of the British Empire and British allies soak up everything that can be exported. By now, tens of thousands of Africans have taken to farming crops alongside the settlers, and they do very well indeed - some of them even do better than the settlers themselves.
Perhaps most importantly in the eyes of the British and others, the center of life for Jews is rapidly shifting from Palestine to east Africa - after all, why would one choose the swampy, barren lands of Palestine for the verdant, beautiful lands of East Africa? A few still do, but the idea of mass emigration of Jews is focusing on East Africa.
In South Africa, many are seeing the same thing, even the Afrikaners. They, however, are stalwart to hold on to "their" land. No problem, that - focus the new efforts to create black farmers in Natal, Eastern Cape and parts of the Free State and Transvaal that are less populated, leaving the Afrikaners alone. By now, South Africa's Jewish population has grown to 130,000 - nearly one-eighth of the total white population - and is growing fast, and they are taking much of the same policies as their brothers in East Africa. Rhodes also wants this, and encourages the settling of intelligent settlers, regardless of race, in the territories controlled by the BSAC. Among many of these new settlers are thousands of Indians, who like the whites, want to get some land of their own. This initially meets opposition from both the whites and the Bantu tribes, particularly the more-militant Shona. But the Indians mostly keep to their own communities are areas to avoid the tensions, and instead focus on improving their own lot. The Indian-descent settlers soon have better relations than the whites. The African Indians, who now number some 260,000, are overwhelming believers in
Satyagraha, living in harmony with the land and their neighbors. This is vindication to Rhodes, who had had to fight to get the Indians considered the same as the whites. More adventurous Jews also start turning up in number in the northern BSAC territories.
1909 is also marked of the arrival of 26-year-old Peter Wilson, a former British Army Sergeant, who founds one of the first purely industrial firms in Africa, the British South African Steel Company, with a loan from the Rothschild family. SASC, realizing the immense and growing demand for steel because of the railroad and building booms, quickly begins building the first fully-integrated steel mills in Africa, focusing their operations on the mining cities of Johannesburg and Potgietersrus, as well as an operation set up in Salisbury, deep within the BSAC territory.