French Somaliland was a French colony in the Horn of Africa. It existed between 1884 and 1967, at which time it became the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas. The Republic of Djibouti is its legal successor state.

The Somali people are a Cushitic ethnic group native to the Horn of Africa who share a common ancestry, culture and history. The Lowland East Cushitic Somali language is the shared mother tongue of ethnic Somalis, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, and they are predominantly Sunni Muslim. Forming one of the largest ethnic groups on the continent, they cover one of the most expansive landmasses by a single ethnic group in Africa.