Flag of Somalia

How to read it

Article 6 of the Provisional Constitution of Somalia (2012) describes the flag, shown in its Schedule One, as a light blue rectangle with a white star of five equal points in the centre. It names no proportions or shades. The same article describes the national emblem: a blue shield in a gold frame with a silver five-pointed star, held by two leopards, and it allows the federal member states their own flags. The flag was adopted on 12 October 1954, before independence, after long discussions between Somalia’s council, the United Nations and Italy, the Foreign Ministry says; Liban presented it to the Legislative Council and explained its symbolism. 12 October is Somalia’s Flag Day.

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What the five points stand for

The five points are the five regions in which Somalis live, according to the federal government, and the Foreign Ministry calls the star a symbol of the historical divisions imposed by colonialism on those five regions. Horseed Media names them by the powers that divided them: southern Somalia under Italy; the north-west under Britain; the Somali region now in Ethiopia; the Northern Frontier District, now in Kenya and then under Britain; and Djibouti under France. The Foreign Ministry adds that the white of the star is the Somali people’s love of peace and unity.

Three readings of the blue

The constitution says only light blue, and the readings differ. Somalia’s Foreign Ministry calls the blue life and the natural resources of Somalia’s long coastline on the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. Goobjoog News reads it as the sky and the sea of the Somali lands. The Brooklyn Museum’s guide to African flags says the blue honours the United Nations, which helped Somalia to independence.

How the flag was chosen

Many designs were drawn and entered in a competition, Goobjoog News writes, and Liban’s was chosen; he made it in less than 24 hours. Horseed Media tells how the Italian administration first refused it because it looked like the flag of the Belgian Congo, and how Liban answered that the Congo flag’s star was gold, not white, after which the administration accepted it. The flag’s song (Heesta Calanka) has words by Hussein Aw Farah Dubbad and music by Abdullahi Qarshe. Liban died in Toronto on 5 June 2001.

Telling it from the Congo’s flag

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s flag is sky blue with a star too, but its constitution puts a yellow star in the top corner by the pole and a red band edged in yellow across the flag. Somalia’s star is white and alone in the centre.