In November 1920, the Società Agricola Italo-Somala (SAIS) was founded in Italian Somaliland, thanks to Luigi Amedeo di Savoia-Aosta, Duke of Abruzzi. With the SAIS, a workers' village named Villabruzzi was established a few dozen kilometres from Mogadishu. In the early 1920s, the SAIS encompassed 25,000 hectares of land planted with various crops: tobacco, sugarcane, peanuts, castor oil, sesame, bananas, sunflowers, and cereals. Its construction required significant land reclamation and the construction of a dam to prevent crop destruction. In the following years, Villabruzzi grew to a population of 9,000, mostly Somalis, and was equipped with various services and facilities, including hospitals, schools, cinemas, churches, mosques, and a railway to Mogadishu. Later, a bazaar and an Italian market were established; efforts were made to respect the local population's culture and traditions, as demonstrated by the construction of the mosque and the bazaar.

With the advent of Fascism, this project was "strengthened" with funding for the construction of facilities and other activities, which served to support the theory of Italian agricultural colonisation of Somalia.

SAIS received "new" contracts for the colonial territory and for Africa in general; the labor contract guaranteed the indigenous settler a farm for his family, irrigated by SAIS, which was to be cultivated in two parts: the first part with food crops such as corn, beans, and durra, a cereal, intended for the Somali settler's family; The second part was to be cultivated with industrial crops such as cotton and sesame, which were the property of SAIS. The contract guaranteed rudimentary medical care and a very modest salary.

Around the 1930s, the number of Italian settlers grew, and SAIS became one of the main exporters of bananas and sugar to the Kingdom of Italy. Fascism's goal was autarky, and efforts were made to achieve it, partly through the colonies.

The Duke of Abruzzi died on March 18, 1933, of cancer, and decided to be buried in the village he had created. After the war, many Italians returned to the peninsula, and the village was almost completely depopulated, although some crops remained active; the final blow came with the civil war of the 1990s. Today, a small community of Italian-Somalis, about 200 people, survives in the area surrounding the town of Johar, which has incorporated what remains of Villabruzzi.