Africa · Eastern Africa
How to draw Somaliland from memory
Somaliland is a single continuous landmass, wider than it is tall. Lock that proportion in before you worry about any individual stretch of border. Its border is simple by world standards, which makes it a good place to build confidence — and also means a low score here has nowhere to hide.
- Difficulty
- easy
- Population
- 5.1 m
- Code
- SOM
Draw Somaliland
Practice · draw from memory
Somaliland
A four-step strategy for Somaliland
- 01
Draw a wide, shallow guide box in your head first — Somaliland is much wider than tall, and getting that ratio right is worth more than any single coastline.
- 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 Somaliland
Nobody has submitted a score for Somaliland 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
- 1.73
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Somaliland
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 south edge is a ruler line, not a coast
About 18% of the perimeter runs in one unbroken direction along the south. 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.
It narrows sharply toward the south
Measured across, the outline is 2.4× wider near its northern edge than near its southern one. A sketch that keeps the same width all the way down looks plausible and scores badly, because a missing taper is missing area.
Somaliland is wider than it is tall
The finished outline holds a ratio of about 1.77 to 1, a horizontal shape. Most failed attempts come from defaulting to a squarish blob — and unlike position, aspect ratio is never normalised away by the scorer.
Answer key: the real shape of Somaliland
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 249 units
- Width to height
- 1.77 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 1
- Longest straight run
- 18% of the perimeter, along the south
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.05× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Somaliland 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 Somaliland is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Somaliland. 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 Somaliland 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.
Somaliland by the numbers
Somaliland covers 168,492 km², which makes it the 89th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 35th largest in Africa. The capital is Hargeisa at about 10°N, 46°E, and it sits in Eastern Africa. It touches Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia, and 100% of its area sits in one main landmass. The rest of the perimeter is water.
Next to Somaliland: 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 Somaliland |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Somalilandthis page | 168,492 km² | 5.1 m | Hargeisa | 1 | — |
 Djibouti | 23,200 km² | 974 k | Djibouti | 1 | 0.14× |
 Ethiopia | 1,104,300 km² | 112.1 m | Addis Ababa | 1 | 6.55× |
 Somalia | 637,657 km² | 10.2 m | Mogadishu | 1 | 3.78× |
Draw these next
Countries near Somaliland 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.
Somaliland drawing questions
How big is Somaliland?
Somaliland covers 168,492 km², ranking 89th of 190 countries here by land area and 35th in Africa. About 15% of the area of Ethiopia.
What is the capital of Somaliland?
The capital is Hargeisa at about 10°N, 46°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 Somaliland on a blank map.
Is Somaliland hard to draw?
It is rated easy, and carries more outline detail than 13% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 1 landmass, with about 18% of the perimeter running dead straight along the south.
Which countries border Somaliland?
Somaliland shares a land border with Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia. The remaining perimeter is coast, which is the part that usually costs points.