A presidential guard casts his vote at a polling place in Hargeisa, Somaliland. Thousands of voters cast ballots in the first multiparty presidential election since the Somaliland republic broke away from Somalia in 1991 to escape the violence and chaos that has beset the rest of the nation. (AP Photo/Osman Hassan)
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Somaliland – Africa’s Best Kept Secret?
By Tilda Palmer
Have you ever heard of Somaliland?
No, not Somalia. There is no shortage of media coverage there—whether lawless pirates, Islamic militants, warring clans, or frightened, desperate civilians. A September 2009 National Geographic article refers to Somalia as having “an entire generation without the slightest clue of what a stable republic looks like.”
Yet just to the north of Somalia is an autonomous region that has enjoyed largely uninterrupted peace since 1996. The breakaway Republic of Somaliland was established in May 1991, after Somalia’s central government collapsed. Somaliland has a capital city, Hargeysa, and a president, Daahir Rayaale Kaahin, elected in a free and fair election, as well as a developing economy.
Despite this, Somaliland receives precious little media coverage and is not recognized as a sovereign nation by any outside government, two facts which most certainly are related. Perhaps if the media broke from familiar stories of corruption and violence in Africa and let out the “secret” of Somaliland, that country’s president would no longer wonder: “Why does Somaliland, with all its success, not receive support from the international community, while Somalia receives all this aid and yet never makes any success? Nobody answers me.”