I'll try to answer your question, sorry if it doesn't satisfy you. My answer is primarily about the Ottomans

During the Conference of Berlin on 1884, representatives of various republics, empires, duchies, and kingdoms participated in the conference to pitch in on the increasingly crowded colonial market. The Ottomans were also attending, but contrary to popular belief they attended to bid into the ranks of imperialist empires after years of defensive stance in the Balkans. The Ottoman agreement to the Berlin act is significant. First, on the one hand with the signing of the act, its right to the Mediterranean coast of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica was acknowledged by other participants in the conference, but, on the other hand, by agreeing to the new rules, it recognized, the right of France to the Muslim-majority areas that were previously Ottoman provinces like Algeria and Tunisia. Second, by signing the agreement, the Porte essentially agreed to redefine its relationship to an integral part of its empire in order to affirm parity with the European powers’ claims to possessions in Africa. This meant an end to the empire’s historic and religious claims to the Muslim-majority African provinces, albeit exclusively on the level of international diplomacy, something that it would later come to regret. However by signing of this act the Porte could assert itself as legally entitled to colonies in Africa well beyond Ottoman Libya.

So with that set, the Ottomans started their work to claim parts of Africa. Through the hinterland system established in the conference, they claimed the Sahara and Lake Chad Basin for their territory. One way to legally claim a part of Africa is to essentially say to other powers that they already have control and administration over said part. Even though the Porte had reasserted control over the coastal areas of Libya, they only nominally controlled the interior, where it was effectively controlled by various Bedouin tribes. But with the Berlin act they need to effectively control it, or at least show it on the surface. And so, they worked to forge an alliance with the Grand Sanussi, the de facto leader of the Bedouin population and the head of the Sanussi order in the area which was the closest thing to a state structure in the Libyan hinterland and to prove effective occupation in that remote region by proxy. The "Sanussi state" institutions were claimed as Ottoman government institutions of power and as signifiers of its rule. To prove a proxy presence in the Libyan Desert and the eastern Sahara, The Porte implemented two parallel strategies: building a partnership with the Sanussi leadership and asserting the state’s presence in the sparsely inhabited Libyan Desert by building telegraph lines and other infrastructures connecting the African frontiers to the coastal cities. Generally, the Grand Sanussi were contempt with Ottoman plans, his plans after all included the promotion of literacy and religious education, support for economic development for the rural population, and the promotion of the Ottoman sultan’s temporal authority in the region. The first Ottoman mission to the Al-Mahdi Al-Sanussi in the end of 1885 was successful, and the Ottoman diplomat al-Mouayad Azmzade believed that the local population was well aware of the dangers of the encroaching European powers and strongly supported Muslim unity

As the competition for Africa heated up, The Porte started a two-track approach. First was the cultivation of the Ottoman-Sanussi political alliance added with the creation of a secret Ottoman-Sanussi military front by channeling Ottoman weapons and ammunition to Sanussi zawāyā (communities). Second was a more aggressive diplomatic posture toward the empire’s European counterparts. By 1887,Secret negotiations were under way between the European powers, especially France and Italy, over the fate of the eastern Sahara and the Lake Chad basin. These negotiations were early warning signs for both the Ottoman Empire and the Sanussi Order of what was to come, and they helped to bring the two closer. Even though the Italians did not invade Ottoman Libya until 1911, Porte was already aware of Italian colonial ambitions in 1887, when a secret agreement between Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Germany gave Italy the green light to occupy Tripolitania and Cyrenaica at some point in the future. That same year, the Ottoman Embassy in Rome and spies in East Africa confirmed increased Italian military activity in Massawa, a city on the Red Sea coast that had been under khedival rule and thus had been a nominal part of the Ottoman Empire before 1885. Attacks across the Tunisia-Tripolitania borderland by French-armed Tunisian tribesmen, along with reports of secret Italian designs on the Libyan hinterland, prompted Al-Mahdi Al-Sanussi to request Ottoman military support. Initially, Porte refused to send aid, fearing that diplomatic relations with the Europeans would suffer. However, by 1888 the Ottomans had begun to smuggle weapons and ammunition to Bedouin tribes under the leadership of Al-Mahdi Al-Sanusi and building a zawiyā in Derna for use as a depot for storing weapons and ammunition being transferred across the desert.

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