After separating from the shrinking British empire, Somaliland voluntarily joined with Somalia for economic and security reasons.
Ethiopia has recently recognised Somaliland passports, and Ethiopian Airlines has announced the first scheduled flights to Hargeisa.
The Ethiopians trade with Somaliland and use its port of Berbera but hold back from endorsing full independence.
Somaliland unilaterally declared independence after the overthrow of Siad Barre - who led Somalia's last functioning national government.
It needs a stable Somaliland to pipe gas from a newly found field in the east to the coast.
In fact, the rest of Somalia and indeed Africa have a lot to learn from the consensus-building techniques employed by Somaliland.
Any British nationals in Somaliland should leave immediately because of "a specific threat to Westerners", the UK Foreign Office has said.
It was already advising Britons in Somalia, including Somaliland, to leave, but has reissued its advice in light of the new threat.
But Mogadishu wants Somaliland to be part of a single Somali state.
Does this suggest that Ethiopia may be about to recognise Somaliland's independence?
Rarely visited by Westerners, Somaliland is fundamentally different from the other countries in the region -- and almost anywhere else on the planet.
After all, Somaliland in the north has already broken away and Puntland, in the north-east, is tenuously connected to the rump of Somalia.
Not everyone is happy with the agreement, in particular the Republic of Somaliland, the north-western, formerly British-run, chunk which unilaterally declared independence in 1991.
There were a number of non-governmental organisations, staffed by Westerners, that worked in Somaliland, a Foreign Office (FCO) spokesman told the BBC News website.
Somaliland's economy relies heavily on selling livestock to the Middle East and on remittances from the huge diaspora in Europe, America and the Gulf states.
According to the rest of the world, Somaliland is, officially, just a part of Somalia, located in the northern area along the Gulf of Aden.
But I really admire the lesser-known advocates for women, like Edna Adan, who has dedicated her life to saving the lives of women in Somaliland.
Tiny Djibouti, home to a large American military base, and secessionist Somaliland, which has peeled way from the rest of Somalia, could both play vital roles.
Somaliland also fosters a small tourist industry offering a warm and welcoming alternative to Somalia for the occasional adventurous international traveller who makes it this far.
Most local banknotes in Somaliland are only worth pennies, so a brick of money is usually needed to buy a meal of camel hump or goat meat.
Its trade officials plan to do more business via the port of Berbera in Somaliland, a mostly unrecognised breakaway from Somalia, and with Port Sudan in Sudan.
Somaliland, an independence-seeking statelet in the Horn of Africa, for example, has curbed the destruction of its ageing weapons because international sanctions stop it buying new ones.
Britain was the former colonial power in Somaliland from 1888-1960.
Mr Egal has even let slip that Somaliland's currency reserves are sitting in the State Bank of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, pending the opening of a Hargeisa branch.
On the other hand I feel optimistic and happy to see, Somaliland's (my parents birthplace) fair and free election that took place on the 26th of June 2010.
Instead, food will have come through the overcrowded port in Djibouti, or else by way of Berbera, in Somaliland, and thence along a new road that stretches inland.
Somaliland was dusty, but the people were cheery and hospitable.
In the dusty local market in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, rows of currency traders set up stalls on the side of the road with money they value by weight.
The breakaway state of Somaliland held its first multi-party general election since it seceded from anarchic Somalia, of which it is still legally a part, more than a decade ago.
Apart from a few new states that have become independent only since 1990, such as Eritrea and (de facto) Somaliland, the only laggard has been the inaptly-named Democratic Republic of Congo.
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