page_title: White Africans of European ancestry
section_title: Libya
hierarchical_section_title: White Africans of European ancestry / Italians in Africa / Libya
caption_attribution_description: English: The first Locomotive arrived in Tripoli Seaport.
context_page_description: White Africans of European ancestry are descendants of any of the white ethnic groups originating on the European continent. In 1989, there were an estimated 4.6 million white people with European ancestry on the African continent. Most are of Dutch, British, Portuguese, German, and French descent; and to a lesser extent there are also those who descended from Italians, Spaniards, and Greeks. The majority once lived along the Mediterranean coast or in Southern Africa.
  The earliest permanent European communities in Africa were formed at the Cape of Good Hope; Luanda, in Angola; São Tomé Island; and Santiago, Cape Verde through the introduction of Portuguese and Dutch traders or military personnel. Other groups of settlers appeared when France and Great Britain colonized Africa. Before regional decolonization, white Africans may have numbered up to 6 million persons and were represented in every part of the continent.
  A voluntary exodus of colonials accompanied independence in most African nations. Portuguese Mozambicans, who numbered about 200,000 in 1975, departed en masse because of economic policies directed against their wealth; they now number 82,000.
context_section_description: Libya had some 150,000 Italian settlers until World War II, constituting about 18% of the total population in Italian Libya. The Italians in Libya resided (and many still do) in most major cities like Tripoli (37% of the city was Italian), Benghazi (31%), and Hun (3%). Their numbers decreased after World War II. Most of Libya's Italians were expelled from the North African country in 1970, a year after Muammar Gaddafi seized power (a "day of vengeance" on 7 October 1970), but a few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s (decade).
caption: Arrival of the first Italian locomotive in Tripoli, Italian Tripolitania, in 1912.
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