The Somali Olympic Committee was founded on 12 December 1959, in Mogadishu, by Ali Omar Scego as head of the organisation. It had been hoped that Somalia would be able to take part in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, but after Scego was posted as Somalia's ambassador to Belgium, based in Brussels, those who succeeded him were unable to take the nation to the Games and the Committee was entirely abandoned.
