A coastline globe, not a territorial map
We draw coastlines without political or administrative boundaries. Markers are navigational places, not territorial claims, membership counts, endorsements, rankings or evidence of a Somali population. Decorative arcs illustrate possible connections; they do not show real travel, messages or live activity.
Every story belongs
Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti, the Somali Region of Ethiopia, northeastern Kenya and diaspora communities deserve equal respect. Northern, southern, rural, urban, coastal, inland and minority experiences cannot be reduced to pins. Place labels follow the source dataset. The combined “Somalia / Somaliland” browsing label acknowledges differing terminology without asserting a position on sovereignty. Administrative names and source country codes are geographic metadata, not a statement of recognition.
Where the labels come from
Place names and coordinates are sourced from the GeoNames cities500 extract and its administrative-name file, downloaded on 19 October 2026. We retain source names and use ASCII variants for search. All source places in Somalia/Somaliland, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya are included; elsewhere, national capitals and cities above the source population threshold of 150,000 serve as worldwide browsing anchors. This threshold limits download size; it does not measure the worth or size of a Somali community. No population values are sent to the browser.
The catalog is not exhaustive: GeoNames cities500 includes places meeting its own population/relevance criteria. Small settlements, variant spellings and diaspora places can be missing. The globe shows a small, equally styled selection of city anchors; the searchable list exposes the full shipped catalog. Smaller, rural and minority communities are welcome even when no marker represents them.
Privacy by omission
No individual profile coordinates, member pins, GPS, IP-derived locations, movement, live presence or group-size metrics feed the globe. We do not collect a location permission. We publish no member-location aggregates, including small groups. Selecting a place searches authored community and opportunity text you already have permission to read. It never infers where a person is.
Permission checks still apply
Discovery requires sign-in and uses your session and existing row-level security for communities, unexpired opportunities, project discussions and mentorship listings. It does not use a service-role key. Results are bounded and uncached; a private group’s existence cannot be inferred from a hidden count. Source-place totals count geographic records only. A location match is a text mention, not proof that a listing is locally based.
Sources and review limits
GeoNames · Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Natural Earth coastlines · public domain
The dataset and coordinate ranges have been checked programmatically, and coverage/naming conventions have been reviewed during implementation. Source licensing, checksums and transformation rules are recorded in the project. Community-led review of local names, contested labels, dialect spellings and geographic completeness is still pending. The interface does not describe this as completed cultural validation.
Suggest a naming or coverage correction →