This financial aid was accompanied by a six months' programme of technical assistance such that Britain would for six months continue to pay the salaries of those former colonial officials who elected, at the request of the Somali government, to stay on after independence. Italy promised a more substantial annual grant of about £3 million, paid partly in the form of salaries to a team of Italian 'experts' serving with the Somali government. The commercial link between the two countries, which brought the southern regions into the European Common Market, was to be continued through the banana monopoly and the heavy dependence of Somalia upon Italy for imported goods.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 423