In 1892, the Italian explorer Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti for the first time labeled as Somalia the region in the Horn of Africa referred to as Benadir.

[5] In doing this, the Kingdom of Italy was spared bloody rebellions like those launched by the Dervish king Diiriye Guure and their emir Mohammed Abdullah Hassan (the so-called "Mad Mullah") over a period of twenty-one years against the British colonial authorities in northern Somalia, an area then referred to as British Somaliland.

With the arrival of Governor Cesare Maria De Vecchi on 15 December 1923, the then-ruling northeastern Somali Sultanes were soon to be forced within the boundaries of La Grande Somalia.

The colonial troops called dubats and the gendarmerie zaptié were extensively used by De Vecchi in this military campaign.

Some thousands of Italian settlers also began moving to Mogadishu as well as agricultural areas around the capital, such as Genale and the Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi.

[1][11] In the late 1930s the triangle area between Italian Mogadiscio, Merca and Villabruzzi was fully developed in agriculture (with a growing export of bananas to Europe), and was even experiencing an initial industrial development thanks to the presence of asphalted roads, railways, and a new international airport & port in the capital.

With United Nations funds pouring in and experienced Italian administrators who had come to see the territory as their home, infrastructural and educational development blossomed.

[23] The economy was controlled by the Bank of Italy through emissions of the Somalo shilling, that was used as money in the Italian administered region from 1950 to 1962.

Operating under a United Nations mandate, they patrolled for nearly two years the southern riverine area around the Shebelle River.

[29] However, it was not until after World War I that this number rose, with the settlers primarily concentrated in the towns of Mogadishu, Kismayo, Brava, and other cites in the south-central Benadir region.

Emigration of entire families was only later promoted during the Fascist period, mainly in the agricultural developments of the Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi (Jowhar), near the Shebelle River.

[31] The area of Janale in southern Somalia (near the Jubba River) was another place where Italian colonists from Turin developed a group of farms.

Under governor De Vecchi, these agricultural areas cultivated cotton, and after 1931, also produced large quantities of banana exports.

[30] Italian Somalis were concentrated in the cities of Mogadishu, Merca, Baidoa, Kismayo and the agricultural areas of the riverine Jubba and Shebelle valleys (around Jowhar/Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi).

After World War II, the number of Italians in Somali territory started to decrease vastly.

With the disappearance of Italians from Somalia, the number of Roman Catholic adherents dropped from a record high of 8,500 parishioners in 1950 (0.7% of Mogadishu's population) to just 100 individuals in 2004.

An Italian ambassador in the 1990s believed that the wide practice of concubinage during the colonial years had created a kind of "ethnic community" with nearly 50,000 Somalis who had at least one grandfather or a great-grandfather Italian-born.

[41] In 1954, the Italian government established post-secondary institutions of law, economics and social studies in Mogadishu.

To this end, the Supreme Revolutionary Council during its tenure officially prohibited the borrowing and usage of Italian and English terms.

[51] Following the adoption of the Provisional Constitution in 2012 by the Federal Government of Somalia, Somali and Arabic were retained as sole official languages.