Somalia

One of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in Africa and one of the least governed, which is not the paradox it looks. Somalis share a language, a religion and a nomadic pastoral tradition, but the organising structure has always been the clan lineage rather than a state, and authority was customarily negotiated through elders under a body of law called xeer. Colonial partition split the Somali-speaking lands five ways, between Britain, Italy, France, Ethiopia and Kenya, and the five-pointed star on the flag refers to that. British and Italian territories united at independence in 1960 in a union arranged in haste. Siad Barre took power in 1969, invaded Ethiopia in 1977 to take the Ogaden and lost when the Soviets switched sides, and his fall in 1991 left no central government at all. Warlords, famine, a failed American intervention in 1993 and the rise of al-Shabaab followed. The north declared the 1960 union void and governs itself as unrecognised Somaliland. Piracy off the coast peaked around 2011. Remittances from the diaspora exceed foreign aid. Mogadishu is the capital. The country has the longest coastline in mainland Africa, over three thousand kilometres. It has about eighteen million people. Somali and Arabic are both official, and Somali was first given an official script only in 1972. Camels are central to the pastoral economy and the country has more of them than any other. Laas Geel holds rock art thousands of years old. Somali poetry is an oral tradition of unusual prestige, and the country has been called a nation of poets.

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