here is the estimate for the population of somalia by region and is widely used.
i think it is complete nonesense, if we want to know what the true population is then look at the kenyan census in 2019 which even decreased the actual ethnic somali population in NFD. from 1 million in mandera to 900k
if we compare mandera to gedo for example lets look at biggest cities and rank them in order
1)mandeera city -- maandeera
2)bardheere -- gedo
3)beledxaawo -- gedo
4) luuq -- gedo
5) elwak -- mandera
6)dolow -- gedo
7) ramu -- mandeera
8) elwak -- gedo
9) garbaharey -- gedo
10)ceelcade gedo
so in the top 10 list only 3 are in mandeere that is urban population. when it comes to rural population outside the cities mentioned above town like dhamese (gedo) gariley (gedo) and darasalaam (gedo) are around the same size as lafey (maandeera) which is the 4th biggest town in mandeera. also the livestock from gedo is sold in NFD specially in mandeera and elwak (kenya) and none of the livestock in mandeera is sold in gedo which indicates that the nomadic/ rural population of gedo is much larger then that of mandeera.
Mandera are
trucked to Nairobi for domestic consumption.
Because of high domestic demand, Kenya exports
very limited numbers of live animals and meat
products: in 2004 only 1.3% of sheep and goats’
meat went overseas (AU-IBAR and NEPDP, 2006;
see also EPZA, 2005 and Aklilu, 2002). Because of
the proximity of Mandera District to Somalia, there
is also a regular flow of goats from Somalia into
Mandera. A number of traders in Elwak indicated
that producers from the Gedo region of Somalia
trek their goats to Elwak for sale. Traders
interviewed in Elwak estimated that approximately
90,000 goats from Somalia are sold in Elwak every
year. Because the Gedo region had not been hit by
severe drought as had Mandera, at the time of the
visit traders noted that goats coming from Somalia
were in better condition than goats in Mandera. In
https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/fi ... s/6054.pdf
so what do you think the real population of gedo is then? it sure is not 500k.