Marsa Fatima came to become a place of history with the coming of the Italian colonizers to Eritrea. The Italian colonialism, as history tells us is known as settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is when colonizers come to one country not only in search of raw materials and cheap labor but also to permanently settle there and make the country as their own. That is why Italy in its first years in Eritrea brought in hundreds of thousands of Italians, mostly poor peoples and peasants from Sicily, to Eritrea.
Those poor Italians were brought in to make fortune and alleviate themselves from poverty and consider Eritrea as their future country. Marsa Fatima was therefore an important small port for the Italians where they took it as nearby gate way for exploitation of potash from the Dalul Depression. It was also one of the different strategic places where the Italian colonizers used to prepare themselves militarily to invade and ultimately conquer Ethiopia. In Marsa Fatima the Italians had big stores where they used to accumulate war supplies for their invading army to the south.
