The star on Somalia’s national flag has five points. The large white five-pointed star is centered on a light-blue field and is the flag’s defining emblem.
The star is known as the Star of Unity. Its five points traditionally represent the five regions inhabited by Somali people during the period when the flag was designed: Italian Somaliland, British Somaliland, the Somali region of Ethiopia, French Somaliland—now Djibouti—and the Northern Frontier District of Kenya.
Somalia adopted the flag on 12 October 1954, before independence, and retained it when the country became independent on 1 July 1960. The light-blue background was influenced by the flag of the United Nations, which helped administer the former Italian trust territory.
The star should not be confused with the star-and-crescent symbols used by several other national flags. Somalia’s emblem is a single white star with five points, and its meaning is tied specifically to Somali unity and the historical distribution of Somali communities.