Somalia Country Info - Africa

Description and Basic Information

Somalia with its capital Mogadishu is located in Africa (Eastern Africa, bordering the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean). It covers some 637,658 square kilometres (slightly smaller than Texas) with 9,379,000 citizens. Somali, Arabic, Italian and English are the languages used by people in Somalia (consider regional differences). Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti are bordering countries.

Somalia is currently a war zone, and remains extremely dangerous for independent travel or sightseeing due to armed conflict between Government forces and insurgents, kidnappings, warlording, and piracy.

Pictures from Capital (Mogadishu)

Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners.

About Somalia

The terrain offers mostly flat to undulating plateau rising to hills in north. The average density of population is about 14 per km². The climate in Somalia can be described as principally desert with northeast monsoon (December to February), moderate temperatures in north and hot in south, southwest monsoon (May to October), torrid in the north and hot in the south, irregular rainfall, hot and humid periods (tangambili) between monsoons. Possible natural disasters include recurring droughts or frequent dust storms over eastern plains in summer or floods during rainy season.

To reach someone in Somalia dial +252 prior to a number. There are 100,000 installed telephones. And there are 641,000 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 900, 1800 Mhz. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".so". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 220V - 50Hz. The following list are the 18 regions/states in Somalia we know off.

Demographic Statistics

In the year 2010, the total Somali population grew at a rate of 2.81% (or by 284,059 citizens). With 154,114 deaths and 438,173 babies born, the natural increase rate lies at 2.81%. 0 persons more in total immigrated to the country than emmigrated.

An overview of age distribution in Somalia: Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.