Somalis are Africans that had cities, forts, industries, ships, education system/schools, commerce, modern state bureaucracies , was either using and minting currency and diplomatic embassies and trading stations abroad.
What other Africans societies was like this in the 1800s? aside from north africa?
And also it wasn't small elite that was literate in Arabic it was widespread poor, rich , young and old, rural and urban:
Each town and village had madrassas and schools teaching arabic by a qadi. Literacy only went down because of the colonial disememberment of Somali arabic educational system, which was replaced with English/Italian curriculum that alienated most Somalis and granted to a few, until the Kacaan government reversed things.
The average pastoralist in some random isolated area could read and write arabic:
''was great number of bedouins who had never resided in towns, and who yet were able to read and write Arabic''
Pastoralists are food producers just like farmers are. Or did you think the Japanese were all city people before industrialization not mostly 80% rural farmers?
UK had a population 10 million in 1800s and Sweden 2.4 million, having a small population means little.
Besides that we also had agricultural population and significant growing urban population as result of the surplus boom in the mid 1800s
I mention Japan because the Kacaan government went through the exact process of industrialization, which i can place side by side.