Hafun Salt Factory (called initially Saline Dante in Italian) was the biggest salt factory in the world during the 1930s. It was created in the area of Hafun (then called "Dante") by the Italians in northern Italian Somalia. [1] In 1941, it was destroyed during the British conquest of Italian East Africa, in World War II.
In 1930, an Italian firm called "Società Saline e Industrie della Somalia settentrionale Migiurtina" ("Saline Companies and Industries of Northern Somalia Migiurtina") invested huge capital to exploit salt deposits in Dante and Hurdiyo. The Hafun Salt Factory was created and was the main producing facility of sea salt in the world in the 1930s. By 1933 or 1934, the Dante salt works were producing more than 200,000 metric tons of salt, most of which was exported to India and the Far East. [2]
The industrial facility of "Saline Dante" gave work to 600 Italians and 2,000 natives (nearly all the native males in Hafun), giving a huge boost to the local Somali economy: Dante city (now called Hafun) grew to more than 5,000 inhabitants in 1939. Electrical plants were built in the Dante area for the facility, together with an aqueduct, solving the semi-desert area problems for the first time in its history. The production reached nearly half a million tons per year in the late 1930s and was supposed to increase in the 1940s, but World War II stopped it.
Soon after the First World War, the Italians realized that the shallow bay of Hafun, which had a long, low beach along the mainland side, was a perfect place for a large salt works. The "Società Saline e Industrie della Somalia Settentrionale" built on both sides of the peninsula of Ras Hafun (Hafun and Hurdiyo) what would be the largest salt-works in the world. The firm, constituted in Milan in 1922, rebuilt a town for 5,000 inhabitants in what was ancient Hafun and called it with the name "Dante". Construction began in 1922 and was completed by 1929. In 1931, production began at the salt factory and soon the enterprise at Ras Hafun was exporting by sea over three hundred thousand tons of salt a year for industrial use. In 1941, during World War II, the British, who had lost British Somaliland to an Italian attack, sent north into Somalia from Kenya an expeditionary force that captured all of Italian East Africa and in the process destroyed the salt works. [3]
The salt was treated with a total of 27.0 km (16.8 mi) long Ropeway conveyor of the salt pans: about 14.0 km (8.7 mi) were across the lagoon to a station on the opposite bank, and then another 16.0 km (9.9 mi) were to the Treatment plant at Dante.
From there, the cable car went to be up to 1.5 km (0.93 mi) into the sea extending loading facilities. The cable car and the rope way was built around 1925, by the German company "Ernst Heckel". [4] The British destroyed the salt factory in 1941 during their conquest of Italian Somalia and since then the productivity has been reduced to a minimal activity until the 1950s, when was totally abandoned. The result was that Hafun in the 1970s was reduced to a small village of nearly 500 native inhabitants surviving mainly on fishing.
However, in late 2014, the Udug Limited Company, in conjunction with the United States-based REDD Engineering & Construction Incorporation, [5] began conducting feasibility studies for the renovation of the salt production plants in Hafun and Hurdiyo. The first phase of the initiative was completed in March 2015, and saw the historic salt works in both towns refurbished following community-wide consultations. REDD Engineering official Lowry Redd indicated that the initiative aims to make the plant in the area of Hafun one of the main global suppliers of salt. [6]
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Italian East Africa was an Italian colony in the Horn of Africa. It was formed in 1936 after the Second Italo-Ethiopian War through the merger of Italian Somalia, Italian Eritrea, and the newly occupied Ethiopian Empire.
Somalia is a country located in the Horn of Africa which officially consists of the intra-46th meridian east territory, the seven federal member states, namely Galmudug, Hirshabelle, Jubaland, South West, Puntland, Somaliland, Khaatumo and the municipality of Benadir. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the west, the Gulf of Aden to the north, the Somali Sea and Guardafui Channel to the east, and Kenya to the southwest. With a land area of 637,657 square kilometers, Somalia's terrain consists mainly of plateaus, plains and highlands. Its coastline is more than 3,333 kilometers in length, the longest of mainland Africa. It has been described as being roughly shaped "like a tilted number seven".
Cape Guardafui is a headland in the autonomous Puntland region in Somalia. Coextensive with Puntland's Gardafuul administrative province, it forms the geographical apex of the Horn of Africa. Its shore at 51°27'52"E is the second easternmost point on mainland Africa after Ras Hafun. The offshore oceanic strait Guardafui Channel is named after it.
Italian Somaliland was a protectorate and later colony of the Kingdom of Italy in present-day Somalia. Ruled in the 19th century by the Somali Sultanates of Hobyo and Majeerteen in the north, and in the south by political entities such as the Hiraab Imamate and Geledi Sultanate.
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Hafun is a town in the northeastern Bari province of Somalia. Situated in Ras Hafun on the coast of the Guardafui Channel, it is the centre of the Hafun District, and the easternmost town in continental Africa. It is an ancient town previously known as Opone.
Ras Hafun, also known as Cape Hafun, is a promontory in the northeastern Bari region of Somalia. Jutting out into the Guardafui Channel, it constitutes the easternmost point in Africa. The area is situated near the Cape Guardafui headland. It is joined to the mainland at the town of Foar, by a sand spit 20.0 km (12.4 mi) long, 1.0–3.0 km (0.62–1.86 mi) in width, and 5.0 m (16.4 ft) above sea level. The fishing town of Hafun is located on the promontory, 2.0 km (1.2 mi) east of the sand spit.
Merca is the capital city of the Lower Shebelle province of Somalia, a historic port city in the region. It is located approximately 109 km (68 mi) to the southwest of the nation's capital Mogadishu. Merca is the traditional home territory of the Major Bimal clan and was the center of the Bimal revolt.
The Ford River Rouge complex is a Ford Motor Company automobile factory complex located in Dearborn, Michigan, along the River Rouge, upstream from its confluence with the Detroit River at Zug Island. Construction began in 1917, and when it was completed in 1928, it was the largest integrated factory in the world, surpassing Buick City, built in 1904.
Masirah Island, also referred to as Mazeira Island or Wilāyat Maṣīrah, is an island off the east coast of mainland Oman in the Arabian Sea, and the largest island of the country. It is 95 km (59 mi) long north–south, between 12 and 14 km wide, with an area of about 649 km2, and a population estimated at 12,000 in 12 villages mainly in the north of the island.
Dubat ; Arabic:العمائم البيضاء ); ḍubbāṭ: English: White turban) was the designation given to members of the semi-regular armed bands employed by the Italian "Royal Corps of Colonial Troops" in Italian Somaliland from 1924 to 1941. The word dubat was derived from a Somali phrase meaning "white turban".
Economic history of Somalia is related to the development of Somalia's economy in the last two centuries.
Ras Lanuf is a Mediterranean town in northern Libya, on the Gulf of Sidra in Tripolitania. The town is also home to the Ra's Lanuf Refinery, completed in 1984, with a crude oil refining capacity of 220,000 bbl/d (35,000 m3/d). The oil refinery is operated by the Ra's Lanuf Oil & Gas Processing Company, a subsidiary of the state-owned National Oil Corporation. Additionally, the city houses the Ra's Lanuf petrochemical complex – a major oil terminal – and oil pipelines: the Amal–Ra's Lanuf, the Messla–Ra's Lanuf, and the Defa-Ra's Lanuf pipeline.
The Capture of Kufra was part of the Allied Western Desert Campaign during the Second World War. Kufra is a group of oases in the Kufra District of south-eastern Cyrenaica in the Libyan Desert. In 1940, it was part of the colony of Italian Libya Libia Italiana, which was part of Africa Settentrionale Italiana (ASI), which had been established in 1934.
Oltre Giuba or Trans-Juba was an Italian colony in the territory of Jubaland in present-day southern Somalia. It lasted from 1924 until 1926, when it was absorbed into Italian Somaliland. Trans-juba is the former name of Jubaland, a federal member state of 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 950 mm, 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.
Italian Benghazi was the name used during the Italian colonization of Libya for the port-city of Benghazi in Italian Cyrenaica.
The Italian colonial railways started with the opening in 1888 of a short section of line in Italian Eritrea, and ended in 1943 with the loss of Italian Libya after the Allied offensive in North Africa and the destruction of the railways around Italian Tripoli. The colonial railways of the Kingdom of Italy reached 1,561 kilometres (970 mi) before WWII.
The Guardafui Channel is an oceanic strait off the tip of the Horn of Africa that lies between the Puntland region of Somalia and the Socotra governorate of Yemen to the west of the Arabian Sea. It connects the Gulf of Aden to the north with the Indian Ocean to the south. Its namesake is Cape Guardafui, the very tip of the Horn of Africa. Notable places of interest include the Alula Lagoon.
The Petrella Airport was the first international airport in Italian Somalia. It was opened in 1928 -just 3 miles south of Mogadishu- with the name "Enrico Petrella" in honor of an Italian pilot who died a few years before in the same airport of Italian Mogadiscio. In 1941 the airport was partially destroyed during WW2 and remained inactive for some years as a civilian airport: only military airplanes used it. In 1950 was reopened as a civilian airport by the Italian authorities of the ONU Fiduciary Mandate.
