Africa · Eastern Africa
How to draw Somalia from memory
Somalia is a single continuous landmass, roughly as wide as it is tall. Lock that proportion in before you worry about any individual stretch of border. Its border sits in the middle of the difficulty range — enough straight sections to anchor you, enough detail to punish a careless stroke.
- Difficulty
- medium
- Population
- 10.2 m
- Code
- SOM
Draw Somalia
Practice · draw from memory
Somalia
A four-step strategy for Somalia
- 01
Start by fixing the overall footprint. Somalia is close to square overall, so a lopsided sketch loses points fast.
- 02
Anchor one unmistakable feature — the straightest border section or the sharpest cape — and draw outward from it in a single continuous stroke.
- 03
Close the loop back to where you started. An open shape gets filled unpredictably and drags your score down.
- 04
Submit, read the nine-sector grid, and redraw immediately. The sector readout names the region you under-drew, and a second attempt typically gains 10–20 points.
Top scores for Somalia
Nobody has submitted a score for Somalia yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Africa
- Subregion
- Eastern Africa
- Outline pieces
- 1
- Detail score
- 3.02
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Somalia
Each one is measured off the outline the game scores, not copied from a reference atlas: the proportions, the straight sections and the way the shape breaks into pieces are all properties of the coordinates your stroke gets compared against.
The north edge is a ruler line, not a coast
About 11% of the perimeter runs in one unbroken direction along the north. Rivers and capes do not do that; a border was drawn on a map. Straighten it deliberately — a wobbly line there throws the whole bounding box.
Both ends are pinched
The widest slice across the centre is 1.6× broader than either the northern or the southern edge. Place the two narrow ends early and the bulge between them cannot come out wrong.
Somalia is close to square
Width against height comes out at 0.76 to 1, so the shape neither runs away sideways nor stretches vertically. Set that box first: with a near-square country almost every lost point comes from the coast detail inside it, not the footprint.
Answer key: the real shape of Somalia
- Box on the canvas
- 333 × 440 units
- Width to height
- 0.76 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 1
- Longest straight run
- 11% of the perimeter, along the north
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.07× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Somalia at least once. Seeing the shape first replaces the recall the score is meant to measure with tracing, and tracing always scores higher than remembering.
Why Somalia is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Somalia. It scales and centres both your stroke and the real border into the same box, fills them, and measures how much of the two shapes overlap relative to their combined area. That means you are never punished for drawing Somalia small, off to one side, or rotated slightly — only for getting the shape itself wrong. The nine-sector grid then splits the real border into a 3×3 mesh and reports coverage per cell, which is how it can tell you that you lost the whole eastern edge rather than just handing you a number.
Somalia by the numbers
Somalia covers 637,657 km², which makes it the 40th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 18th largest in Africa. The capital is Mogadishu at about 10°N, 49°E, and it sits in Eastern Africa. It touches Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya, and 100% of its area sits in one main landmass. The rest of the perimeter is water.
Next to Somalia: its land neighbours
Size is what the outline has to fill, so comparing the countries that share this border side by side is the fastest way to get the proportions into your head before you draw.
| Country | Area | Population | Capital | Pieces | vs Somalia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Somaliathis page | 637,657 km² | 10.2 m | Mogadishu | 1 | — |
 Djibouti | 23,200 km² | 974 k | Djibouti | 1 | 0.04× |
 Ethiopia | 1,104,300 km² | 112.1 m | Addis Ababa | 1 | 1.73× |
 Kenya | 580,367 km² | 52.6 m | Nairobi | 1 | 0.91× |
Draw these next
Countries near Somalia share border conventions and coastline styles, which makes them the most useful follow-up practice.
Working through one country at a time is slow. Take the blank map of africa and label the whole region from memory — it shows you which neighbours you have never actually seen.
Somalia drawing questions
How big is Somalia?
Somalia covers 637,657 km², ranking 40th of 190 countries here by land area and 18th in Africa. About 58% of the area of Ethiopia.
What is the capital of Somalia?
The capital is Mogadishu at about 10°N, 49°E. The game scores the shape of the border rather than the position of any city, so the capital and its coordinates are here to help you place Somalia on a blank map.
Is Somalia hard to draw?
It is rated medium, and carries more outline detail than 57% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 1 landmass, with about 11% of the perimeter running dead straight along the north.
Which countries border Somalia?
Somalia shares a land border with Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya. The remaining perimeter is coast, which is the part that usually costs points.