page_title: Italian East Africa
section_title: Demographics
hierarchical_section_title: Italian East Africa / Colonial administration / Demographics
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Italian East Africa with governatorates boundaries, 1936
context_page_description: Italian East Africa was an Italian colony in the Horn of Africa. It was formed in 1936 through the merger of Italian Somalia, Italian Eritrea, and the newly occupied Ethiopian Empire, conquered in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.
  Italian East Africa was divided into six governorates. Eritrea and Somalia, Italian possessions since the 1880s, were enlarged with captured Ethiopian territory and became the Eritrea and Somalia Governorates. The remainder of "Italian Ethiopia" consisted the Harar, Galla-Sidamo, Amhara, and Scioa Governorates. Fascist colonial policy had a divide and conquer characteristic and favored the Somali and Tigrayan peoples in order to weaken the Amhara people who had been the ruling ethnic group in the Ethiopian Empire.
  During the Second World War, Italian East Africa was occupied by a British-led force including colonial units and Ethiopian guerrillas in November 1941. After the war, Italian Somalia and Eritrea came under British administration, while Ethiopia regained its independence. In 1950, occupied Somalia became the United Nations Trust Territory of Somaliland, administered by Italy from 1950 until its independence in 1960.
context_section_description: In 1939, there were 165,267 Italian citizens in the Italian East Africa, the majority of them concentrated around the main urban centres of Asmara, Addis Ababa and Mogadishu. The total population was estimated around 12.1 million, with a density of just over 6.9 inhabitants per square kilometre (18/sq mi). The distribution of population was, however, very uneven. Eritrea, with an area of 230,000 km² (90,000 sq mi), had a population estimated in about 1.5 million, with a population density of 6.4/km² (16.7/sq mi); Ethiopia with an area of 790,000 km² (305,000 sq mi) and a population of some 9.5 million, had a resulting density of 12/km² (31/sq mi); sparsely populated Italian Somaliland finally, with an area of 700,000 km² (271,000 sq mi) and a population of just 1.1 million, had a very low density of 1.5/km² (4/sq mi).
caption: Administrative subdivisions of Italian East Africa
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