French Somaliland in the context of "French Territory of the Afars and the Issas"

Djibouti, officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Somalia to the south, Ethiopia to the southwest, Eritrea in the north, and the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to the east. The country has an area of 23,200 km (8,958 sq mi).

In antiquity, the territory, together with Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somaliland, was part of the Land of Punt. Nearby Zeila, now in Somaliland, was the seat of the medieval Adal and Ifat Sultanates. In the late 19th century, the colony of French Somaliland was established after the ruling Dir, Somali, and Afar sultans signed treaties with the French, and its railroad to Dire Dawa (and later Addis Ababa) allowed it to quickly supersede Zeila as the port for southern Ethiopia and the Ogaden. It was renamed the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas in 1967. A decade later, the Djiboutian people voted for independence. This officially marked the establishment of the Republic of Djibouti, named after its capital city. The new state joined the United Nations in its first year. In the early 1990s, tensions over government representation led to armed conflict, which ended in a power-sharing agreement in 2000 between the ruling party and the opposition.

In international relations, Françafrique (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃safʁik]) is France's sphere of influence (or pré carré in French, meaning 'backyard') over former French and (also French-speaking) Belgian colonies in sub-Saharan Africa. The term was derived from the expression France-Afrique, which was used by the first president of Ivory Coast, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, in 1955 to describe his country's close ties with France. It was later pejoratively renamed Françafrique by François-Xavier Verschave in 1998 to criticise the alleged corrupt and clandestine activities of various Franco-African political, economic and military networks, also defined as France's neocolonialism.

Following the accession to independence of its African colonies beginning in 1959, France continued to maintain a sphere of influence over the new countries, which was critical to then President Charles de Gaulle's vision of France as a global power (or grandeur in French) and as a bulwark to British and American influence in a post-colonial world.

The Ethio-Djibouti Railway (French: Chemin de Fer Djibouto-Éthiopien, C.D.E.; Amharic: የኢትዮ-ጅቡቲ ባቡር መስመር) is a metre gauge railway in the Horn of Africa that once connected Addis Ababa to the port city of Djibouti. The operating company was also known as the Ethio-Djibouti Railways. The railway was built in 1897–1917 to connect the Ethiopian capital city to French Somaliland. During early operations, it provided landlocked Ethiopia with its only access to the sea. After World War II, the railway progressively fell into a state of disrepair due to competition from road transport.

The railway has been mostly superseded by the Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway, an electrified standard gauge railway that was completed in 2017. The metre gauge railway has been abandoned in central Ethiopia and Djibouti. However, a rehabilitated section is still in operation near the Ethiopia-Djibouti border. As of February 2018, a combined passenger and freight service runs two times a week between the Ethiopian city of Dire Dawa and the Djibouti border, stopping at Dewele (passengers) and Guelile (freight). Plans were announced in 2018 to rehabilitate track from Dire Dawa to Mieso.

Djibouti (also called Djibouti City and Jibuti in early Western texts) is the capital city of the Republic of Djibouti. It is located in the coastal Djibouti Region on the Gulf of Tadjoura.

Djibouti has a population of around 780,000 inhabitants, which counts for 73% of the country's population. The settlement was founded in 1888 by the French, on land leased from the ruling Somali and Afar Sultans. During the ensuing period, it served as the capital of French Somaliland and its successor the French Territory of the Afars and Issas.

Greater Somalia, also known as Greater Somaliland (Somali: Soomaaliweyn; Arabic: الصومال الكبرى, romanized: al-Sūmāl al-Kubrā), is the geographic location comprising the regions in the Horn of Africa in which ethnic Somalis live and have historically inhabited.

During the Scramble for Africa at the end of the 19th century, Somali-inhabited territories were partitioned between imperial powers. The unification of these territories became a focal objective of an independent Somalia. Referred to as "Greater Somalia," these regions, at the outset of Somali independence, encompassed State of Somaliland (former British Somaliland) and Trust Territory of Somaliland (former Italian Somaliland), which had successfully merged into a single nation in 1960. French Somaliland, the Northern Frontier District (NFD) in Kenya, and the Ogaden region in Ethiopia were placed under the control of neighboring states despite the pre-independence unification efforts of Somali nationalists.

A referendum on the new constitution of France was held in French Somaliland on 28 September 1958 as part of a wider referendum held across the French Union. The new constitution would see the country become part of the new French Community if accepted, or result in independence if rejected. It was approved by 75.24% of voters.

An independence referendum was held in French Somaliland on 19 March 1967. It was ordered by then President of France, General Charles de Gaulle, in response to rioting and demonstrations upon an official visit he made to the territory the year before. Voters rejected independence from France by a 22-point margin.

It was the second of three independence referendums. In the first referendum, the 1958 French Somaliland constitutional referendum, voters rejected independence by a 50-point margin. In the third referendum, the 1977 Afars and Issas independence referendum, voters near-unanimously backed independence.