page_title: Italian diaspora
section_title: Elsewhere in Africa
hierarchical_section_title: Italian diaspora / By region / Elsewhere in Africa
caption_attribution_description: Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, Asmara
context_page_description: Italian diaspora is the large-scale emigration of Italians from Italy. There are two major Italian diasporas in Italian history. The first diaspora began around 1880, two decades after the Unification of Italy, and ended in the 1920s to early-1940s with the rise of Fascism in Italy. Poverty was the main reason for emigration, specifically the lack of land as property became subdivided over generations; especially in Southern Italy where conditions were harsh. Until the 1860s, Italy was a partially rural society with many small towns and cities and almost no modern industry, in which land management practices, especially in the South and North-East, did not easily convince farmers to stay on the land and work the soil. Another factor was related to the overpopulation of Southern Italy after the improvements of the socio-economic conditions, following the unification process. This created a demographic boom and forced the new generations to emigrate en masse at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, mostly to the Americas.
context_section_description: The Italians had a significantly large, but very quickly diminished population in Africa. In 1926, there were 90,000 Italians in Tunisia, compared to 70,000 Frenchmen (unusual since Tunisia was a French protectorate). Former Italian communities also once thrived in the Horn of Africa, with about 50,000 Italian settlers living in Eritrea in 1935. The Italian Eritrean population grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II. The size of the Italian Egyptian community had also reached around 55,000 just before World War II, forming the second-largest expatriate community in Egypt.
  During the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, roughly 300,000 Italians settled in the Italian East Africa (1936-1947). Over 49,000 lived in Asmara in 1939 (around 10% of the city's population), and over 38,000 resided in Addis Ababa. After independence, many Italians remained for decades after receiving full pardon by Emperor Selassie, as he saw the opportunity to continue the modernization efforts of the country. However, due to the Ethiopian Civil War in 1974, nearly 22,000 Italo-Ethiopians left the country. 80 original Italian colonists remain alive in 2007, and nearly 2000 mixed descendants of Italians and Ethiopians. In the 2000s, some Italian companies returned to operate in Ethiopia, and a large number of Italian technicians and managers arrived with their families, residing mainly in the metropolitan area of the capital.
  A few Italian settlers stayed in Portuguese colonies in Africa after World War II. As the Portuguese government had sought to enlarge the small Portuguese population through emigration from Europe, the Italian migrants gradually assimilated into the Angolan Portuguese community.
caption: Church of Our Lady of the Rosary in Asmara, built by Italian Eritreans in 1923.
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