By Faisal Abdirashid Adam MOFA Taiwan Fellow, Visiting Scholar NTNU
My research was built on investigating five distinct but interrelated topics, ranging from the historical rationale behind the alliance to the risks and opportunities it carries for both sides. But underneath them all sat one unifying question: what does each side actually get from this partnership, and what does it teach us about the nature of diplomatic recognition itself? To answer this, I conducted ten semi-structured interviews with diplomats, government officials, and academics on both sides, alongside an analysis of official communiqués and policy documents.
The answer that emerged is what I call the “Double Gateway” framework. Somaliland offers Taiwan an entry point into East Africa at a moment when Taipei’s formal diplomatic allies are dwindling. Taiwan, in turn, offers Somaliland an unofficial channel into Washington through the Congressional Taiwan Caucus. Crucially, interviewees pointed out that Beijing has no diplomatic relationship with Somaliland, just as Taipei has none with Somalia. This total absence of entanglement is precisely what makes Somaliland attractive: it is a rare space where Taiwan can build a relationship without first negotiating around Chinese interests.
Several respondents also drew a fascinating historical parallel, noting that just as the Republic of China first held the UN seat representing China prior to 1971, Somaliland was the first Somali territory to gain independence in 1960, becoming self-governing before Somalia. In this reading, both Taiwan and Somaliland are “parent countries” of a larger political identity that later eclipsed them internationally. This shared narrative gives the partnership a deeper legitimacy that goes far beyond present convenience.
For Somaliland, the relationship functions as proof of governing capacity. Scholarships for more than 150 Somaliland students, joint health projects, and a planned hospital in Hargeisa and other projects are not simply development assistance. For Taiwan, the arrangement offers something it increasingly needs: proof that it can still make friends outside its shrinking circle of formal allies, and a foothold in a strategically-located territory commanding the approaches to the Bab el-Mandeb strait, one of the world’s busiest and most contested shipping corridors. Respondents on the Taiwanese side described the relationship as bottom-up diplomacy conducted by positioning Taiwan as a reliable partner.
None of this is without cost. China has responded with open hostility, treating the relationship as a direct challenge to its “One China” principle. Similarly, Somalia maintains a strict “One Somalia” policy, and the African Union, while having issued no formal condemnation about the relationship between the two countries, remains cautious out of concern for Somalia’s territorial claims. One interviewee suggested that Israel’s recognition of Somaliland may end up helping Taiwan’s case indirectly, by showing that recognizing an unrecognized state is not the unthinkable act it once seemed.
What I take from this, as someone writing from inside both contexts, is that the Somaliland-Taiwan relationship is best understood as an example of the early stages of building “functional sovereignty”: international standing that is earned incrementally, through demonstrations of capacity for governance and reliability in partnerships, rather than granted all at once through legal recognition. It will not substitute for a UN seat. But it demonstrates that the space between full recognition and complete isolation is larger, and offers more utility, than it might seem to from outside.
Writing this research in Taipei, surrounded by a society that itself knows what it means to build international relationships without a guarantee of formal recognition, has sharpened rather than softened that conclusion. Somaliland and Taiwan are, in their own ways, proving the same point that legitimacy, in the twenty-first century, is something states can build as well as receive.
About the Author: Faisal Abdirashid Adam is a researcher specializing in public policy, governance, and political issues in the Horn of Africa. Supported by the 2026 Taiwan Fellowship, he has been a Visiting Scholar at NTNU and holds two Master’s degrees: one in International Relations and Diplomacy, and another in Project Planning and Management. He earned his Bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Law, and is an alumnus of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) East Africa.