Introduction

Somalia, country on the Horn of Africa. It occupies an important geopolitical position between sub-Saharan Africa and the countries of Arabia and southwestern Asia. With an area of about 246,000 square miles (637,000 square kilometres), it is bounded on the north by the Gulf of Aden and on the east by the Indian Ocean; from its southern point, its western border is bounded by Kenya and Ethiopia and, to the northwest, by Djibouti.
The capital is Mogadishu (in Somali, Muqdisho or Xamar; in the colonial Italian rendering, Mogadiscio).

Living in a country of geographic extremes, with a dry and hot climate and a landscape of thornbush savanna and semidesert, the inhabitants of Somalia have developed equally demanding economic survival strategies.
The Somali are Muslim, and about half follow a mobile way of life, pursuing nomadic pastoralism or agropastoralism. As a result, the Somali are an egalitarian, freedom-loving people who are suspicious of governmental authority.

In colonial times the lands traditionally occupied by the Somali were divided by a new western boundary for Somalia, resulting in large Somali communities in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

This boundary is still in dispute.
The Somali Peninsula consists mainly of a tableland of young limestone and sandstone formations. Apart from a mountainous coastal zone in the north and several pronounced river valleys, most of the country is extremely flat, with few natural barriers to restrict the mobility of the nomads and their livestock.