The Mogadishu-Villabruzzi Railway is the now-destroyed railway in southern Somalia , built during the existence of Italian Somalia to the Webi Shabelle River . The road existed in the years 1914-1941 and was used mainly for the transportation of agricultural products. During World War II, it was destroyed by British troops. From this moment to the present, there are no railways in Somalia.
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Content
History
By the end of the 19th century, the southeastern, central, and northeastern parts of present-day Somalia were colonized by Italians with the formation of the colony Italian Somaliland. The construction of the railway began in the vicinity of the administrative center of the colony, Mogadishu, after the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
In 1918, the road was extended to the city of Baidoa , planning to bring it to Afgoye , but at that time the construction was stopped after laying 29 km of the road. In September 1924, however, the railway reached Afgoy [1] .
In the mid-1920s, Luigi Amedeo , a member of the Italian royal family, planned to extend the railway to the Webi-Shabelle River, along which he decided to create colonial settlements. Construction of the new section of the railway began in January 1927 and was completed in September [1] . The road with a total length of 114 km reached Villabruzzi (now Dzhokhar), which became its final point, in 1928. Initially, it was assumed that the railway would be extended from the Villabrutia to the Somali-Ethiopian border and in Ogaden , but the beginning of the Second Italian-Abyssinian War in 1936 suspended further construction.
In 1936, as a result of the war, most of Ethiopia was occupied by Italy and incorporated into the newly formed colony of Italian East Africa . In 1939, Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini planned to build roads and railways between Mogadishu and the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, but before the start of World War II, only the highway was built (βLa Strada Imperialeβ).
In 1941, when Great Britain occupied the Italian possessions in East Africa during the war, the railway was dismantled by British troops. Since that time, it was no longer used, with the exception of some unexplored areas in the Mogadishu harbor area. In 1942, several diesel locomotives were transported by the British government to captured Eritrea, where they were then used on the Massawa-Asmara railway.
In the 1980s, Mohammed Siad Barre , President of Somalia, announced a plan to restore the railway, but because of the collapse of his regime as a result of the outbreak of the Somali civil war, these plans were not implemented.
Statistics
This railway was operated by Ferrovie Somale . The railway was used primarily for cargo transportation. Most of the goods were agricultural products - cotton, bananas and coffee, which were brought from plantations in the Villabruzzi area for export sales through the port of Mogadishu. Nevertheless, the road was used by tourists. According to statistics for the year 1930, trains on the railway carried 19,359 passengers and 43,467 tons of cargo, and revenues amounted to 1591527 Somali liras.
Bibliography
- Antonicelli, Franco. Trent'anni di storia italiana 1915-1945 . Mondadori Editore. Torino, 1961.
- Del Boca, Angelo. Una sconfitta dell'intelligenza. Italia e Somalia . Laterza Editore. Bari, 1993.
- Tripodi, Paolo. The Colonial Legacy in Somalia . St. Martin's P Inc. New York, 1999.
- Ferrovie nelle colonie italiane: Somalia (pag. 9) (it.).