Somalia 🇸🇴

Somalia is a sovereign country in Eastern Africa, in the wider region of Africa. Treaties and official documents call it Federal Republic of Somalia. Its seat of government is Mogadishu.

It covers 637,657 km², which ranks it 43rd of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Afghanistan and just ahead of the Central African Republic. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is a little larger than Kenya.

It is home to roughly 19.0 million people, placing it 68th of 249 by population — between Romania above it and Senegal below. Within Eastern Africa alone it is the 5th largest of 20 and the 9th most populous.

The coordinates the dataset gives are 10.0° N, 49.0° E, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 1,113 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Nigeria, Venezuela and Ivory Coast sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

3 countries share a land border with it: Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya. The largest of them by area is Ethiopia, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 189.7 million people.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

Spread across 637,657 km², that works out at about 30 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

It recognises 2 languages: Arabic and Somali. Somali is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Somalia. Arabic, the first listed, is shared with 24 other entries worldwide.

Someone from Somalia is a Somali.

Against Africa as a whole it is the 24th most populous of 59 entries, and it accounts for 3.9% of everyone living in Eastern Africa.

The Somali shilling (SOS) is used only in Somalia among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. Arabic is listed for 25 entries here, Somalia among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Zoom in from the world to Eastern Africa and Somalia sits 9th of 20 by population and 5th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Zambia just above and Zimbabwe just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Ethiopia is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Eastern Africa has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇿🇲 Zambia
• 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe
• 🇪🇹 Ethiopia

Put next to every other entry on this site, Somalia ranks 43rd of 249 by area and 68th by population. That works out at 0.43% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.23% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Somalia in the size ordering are Afghanistan at 652,230 km² and Central African Republic at 622,984 km², against Somalia's 637,657 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Somalia averages 30 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 188th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Money there is the Somali shilling (Sh, SOS). It is issued for Somalia alone.

Mogadishu is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

Websites there use the .so domain. The international dialling code is +252. Standard country codes: so and SOM.

Somalia is one of the 192 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.