Why Somalia is a 7

Two coasts

Somalia sits on the Horn of Africa, the easternmost point of the continent, running from just south of the Equator north to the Gulf of Aden.^[3] Its outline is often said to look like a tilted number seven.^[1]

The top stroke was British. Britain set up the protectorate of British Somaliland in 1884 through treaties with Somali leaders along the Gulf of Aden. The downstroke was Italian: from 1889 Italy signed protection treaties along the Indian Ocean coast, rented the ports of Brava, Merca and Mogadishu from the Sultan of Zanzibar, and in 1905 bought them outright, when the name Italian Somaliland came into use.^[2]

Ethiopia held the inside

Between and behind the two coasts was Ethiopia, whose forces stopped an Italian advance at Adwa in 1896; the peace that followed ended Italy’s claim to be Ethiopia’s protector.^[2] An Anglo-Italian treaty of 1894 had drawn British Somaliland’s limit south to the 8th parallel, but in 1897 Ethiopia and Britain signed a treaty that cut the protectorate back to exclude most of the Haud, a wet-season grazing plain, while letting herders cross the line with their animals.^[2]

In the south, Emperor Menelik drew a line on a map in 1897 to show the boundary he would accept with Italy; Italy agreed by telegram, but no texts were exchanged and the map was lost. A 1908 convention left the Ogaden and the tribes toward it with Ethiopia and the coastal tribes with Italy, and a commission marked only about 80 miles of it.^[2] In 1924 Britain ceded Jubaland, west of the Juba River, from Kenya to Italian Somaliland, filling out the bottom of the 7.^[2]

Joined in 1960

After Italy’s war with Ethiopia in 1935–36, Italian Somaliland was enlarged with the Ogaden. From 1941 the British ran both Somalilands and the Ogaden; in 1948 they withdrew from most of the Ogaden, and a provisional line was set “without prejudice” to the real frontier with Ethiopia.^[2] British Somaliland became independent on 26 June 1960 and five days later joined the former Italian territory as the Somali Republic.^[2] In 1978 the US Office of the Geographer still described 509 miles of the border with Ethiopia as that provisional line.^[2]

“as being without prejudice to the international frontier between Ethiopia and former Italian Somaliland”^[2]