So, why is Somaliland Africa's most successful non-country?
A Somaliland woman hold a miniature flag during independence day celebration parade in the capital Hargeisa on May 18, 2016. Even as Somalilanders are fiercely emphatic that theirs is an independent country, the rest of the world insists on not recognising the territory as such. PHOTO | AFP
When I told a friend recently that I was going to Hargeisa, he looked at me in a way that told me immediately that he had no clue what I was talking about. He eventually asked: “Where is that?”
Many asked me this same question in 2014 when I first went to Hargeisa. So in many ways, here in East Africa, as elsewhere in the world, I suppose, Hargeisa remains an unknown quantity nearly 30 years since Somaliland, the country whose capital city it is, broke away from the rest of Somalia and declared itself independent.
