Somalilandsun: Somaliland is a defacto republic in East Africa with about 3.4 million inhabitants. The Republic is located in the northwest of Somalia’s territory, in the Horn of Africa and borders Ethiopia to the south, Djibouti to the west, the Gulf of Aden to the north and the Puntland Autonomous Region of Somalia to the east.
The official languages of Somaliland are Arabic, Somali and English. Somaliland’s own shilling is used as a means of payment in the autonomous region.
The highest point in Somaliland is the 2,450-meter-high Shimbris in the Somali highlands.
The largest cities in the republic include Hargeisa, Berbera, Boorama, Las Anod, Burao, Zeila, Lughaya, Amud and Erigabo.
The population of Somaliland is predominantly Muslim, and almost half of all people still live as nomads today.
The most important industry in the Autonomous Republic is livestock. About 20 to 30 million live sheep, goats, cattle or camels are exported to neighboring Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries via the country’s largest port in Berbera.
In agriculture, millet, beans, sorghum, maize, cereals and fruit are grown mainly for personal use.
Hargeisa, or Hargeysa, is the capital of Somaliland with approximately 900,000 1,300 inhabitants. The city is located at an altitude of almost XNUMX meters and is the political and, together with the city of Berbera, the economic center of the country.
The main sights of Hargeisa include the rock paintings “Laas Geel”, the central market, the Independence Monument, the “Mig Jet” monument commemorating the destruction of Hargeisa in 1988, the Saryan Museum and the Livestock Market.
In October 2017, I made a stopover in Hargeisa on my flight from Dubai to Mogadishu. Unfortunately, due to my missing visa for Somaliland, which I tried to apply for several months in advance, I could not leave the airport building.
A return visit to Somaliland and a detour to neighboring Puntland are planned in the near future.
The author Sven Luca , one of the most traveled people in the world and a member of the Travelers Hall of Fame in Auckland. Since March 8, 2019, belong to the selected group of only 28 people on this planet who have visited every single country on earth. This includes not only the 193 UN states that I identified with Samoa as 03 on 2019 February 196.
