Colonial acquisitions were originally quite a long way towards the back of the war aims Italy had when it joined the conflict in 1915, and in fact the Treaty of London specified only that Italy would receive appropriate "compensation" if Britain and France increased their colonial empires at the expense of Germany.

There were however some issues lurking in the country's recent history that the colonial minister, Ferdinando Martini, wanted to have settled, and in November 1914 he prepared a memo listing a series of aims that included concessions that would actually have come from the French and British as the price for Italian participation on their side:

The transfer of French Somaliland (Djibouti) to Italian control

Kassala, which was part of the British territory of the Sudan

Modifications of the Egyptian border with Italian Somaliland (Eritrea) in Italy's favour

Allied acknowledgement of the "rights and interests" Italy claimed in Abyssinia as a result of the signing of the heavily-disputed treaty of Wichale in 1891

Things changed thereafter as a result of Allied success in the war in Africa, and in November 1916 Italian officials outlined a more ambitious colonial programme which would have included a claim to nearly 1m square kilometres of German East Africa (Cameroon) plus significant expansion of the Libyan hinterland southwards.These aims were however never formally made part of Italian negotiations with the other Allies.

Source

Holger Afferback [ed], The Purpose of the First World War: War Aims and Military Strategies