Quoting Tekeste Negash’s Italian Colonialism in Eritrea, 1882–1941, pages 96–7:

For E.A. Scaglione, a biographer of Governor Aosta, [Fascist] Italy pursued a policy, during the 1937–40 period, that was very similar to that of apartheid. According to Scaglione’s interpretation, the East African empire was to be divided into three geographical zones.

In the first zone, entirely inhabited by Italian colonists, autonomous politico‐administrative structures were to be developed. The colonial state would be obsolete as it was envisaged that the first zone would become the home of an Italian community, planted in African soil. The second zone was a much wider area, and where the main economic activities were to be controlled by [Fascist] agro‐industry. The natives were not to be pushed out completely as they were required to provide labour for [Fascist] capital.

The last zone was presumably to comprise all the areas that were of least economic interest to [the Fascist bourgeoisie]. This third zone was to be at the disposition of the natives. The colonial state was to function as a mediator between the first and the other two zones.

On the basis of the laws which made inter‐racial cohabitation punishable, Angelo Del Boca, has argued that [Fascist] Italy pursued policies that were similar to the system of apartheid as practiced […] in the Republic of South Africa. For Professor Denis Mack Smith, a British scholar of Italian history, ‘the most notable contribution of Fascist Italy to colonialism was the theory and practice of apartheid’. Similar views have also been expressed by Professor Sergio Romano in his concluding comments on the Italian invasion of Libya.

In his anthology on Italian Imperialism, Professor Aldo Mola concurred with the summation of Denis Mack Smith that Italy pursued a policy of apartheid in Africa. Explaining the class basis of Italian colonial racism, Professor Mola emphasized that it did not help to qualify the ‘apartheid’ nature of [Fascist] native policy by presenting numerous cases of commercial sexual contacts between [Fascist] colonizers and their Eritrean ‘madames’ which permeate colonial chronicles.

The purposes of racial laws and the basis of [Fascist] racism according to Mola were not only to create a barrier against the consequences of inter‐racial sexual contacts but to reaffirm in a very drastic manner the immutability of the relations between the colonizer and the colonized.

However, for professor Alberto Sbacchi, the author of the most substantial study on [Fascist] colonialism in Ethiopia, 1936–40, colonial policies are discussed as conglomerations of isolated episodes rather than as a well‐defined and coherent system of relations between the colonizer and the colonized.

(Emphasis added.)