Rail transport in Somalia Somalia-Ethiopia border. Somali troops from the First and Second Somali divisions of the Italian colonial army helped during the construction. Rail transport in Somalia Railway transport in Somalia consisted of the erstwhile Mogadishu–Villabruzzi Railway and secondary tracks. The system was built during the 1910s by the authorities in Italian Somaliland. Its track gauge was , a gauge favoured by the Italians in their colonies in the Horn of Africa and North Africa. The railway was dismantled in the 1940s by the British during their military occupation of Italian Somaliland, and was subsequently never rehabilitated. The 114 km of the Mogadishu-Villabruzzi
Slavery in Somalia had previously been absent from. The Bantus inhabiting Somalia are descended from Bantu groups that had settled in Southeast Africa after the initial expansion from Nigeria/Cameroon, and whose members were later captured and sold into the Arab slave trade. Bantus are ethnically, physically, and culturally distinct from Somalis, and they have remained marginalized ever since their arrival in Somalia. All in all, the number of Bantu inhabitants in Somalia before the civil war is thought to have been about 80,000 (1970 estimate), with most concentrated between the Juba and Shabelle rivers in the south. However, recent estimates place the figure