Geography of Somalia Geography of Somalia Somalia is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the west, Djibouti to the northwest, the Gulf of Aden to the north, the Indian Ocean and Guardafui Channel to the east, and Kenya to the southwest. With a land area of 637,657 square kilometers, Somalia's terrain consists mainly of plateaus, plains and highlands. Its coastline is more than 3,333 kilometers in length, the longest of mainland Africa and the Middle East. It has been described as being roughly shaped "like a tilted number seven". In the far north, the rugged
Geology of Somalia and island arcs. In the Early Jurassic, the supercontinent Gondwana, which included Africa, began to break apart. The marine transgression of the Tethys Ocean flooded large parts of East Africa and Arabia and new sedimentary rock units were deposited. In the west of Somalia, the Cretaceous at the end of the Mesozoic brought crustal upwarping, which is preserved in the Yesomma Sandstone. Two major sedimentary basins began to form in Somalia during the Mesozoic, the Somali Coastal Basin and the Luuq-Mandera Basin, both filled with up to five kilometers of sedimentary rock. The basins formed due to the movements of