How much do you know about landlocked countries in Africa? If your knowledge on this topic is quite limited, then let us help you out. Learn more about African landlocked countries, their capitals and other interesting facts.
What are landlocked countries?
Before we jump into our list of landlocked countries of Africa, let’s define what a landlocked country actually is. Even if you do not really know the exact meaning of this term, it is easy to understand just from the word itself that we are talking about a country that is entirely locked by land on all sides. However, it is also important to note that landlocked countries can actually have coastlines, but only the ones that lie on closed seas.
Being landlocked is not a great thing for any country, as it creates economic and political handicaps due to the absence of access to high seas. For ages, countries have fought tooth and nail for their access to open waters, which has resulted in many violent conflicts. Nevertheless, not all of them have been able to change their situation.
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At the moment, there are 49 landlocked countries in the world (if you include partially recognised states), and 16 out of those are African countries. Let’s talk about each of them in a little bit more detail.
List of African countries that are landlocked
Photo: quora.com
This is how we are going to do this: we are going to list the countries, their location in Africa, their capitals, area and population, as well as the countries that surround them and ‘lock them in’. We are going to list the landlocked countries in alphabetical order, so that you can easily find what you are looking for. Without further ado, here are all of the African landlocked countries:
Botswana
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Southern Africa
- Capital: Gaborone
- Area: 581,730 square km
- Population: 2,250,260
- Landlocked by: South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia
Burkina Faso
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Central Africa
- Capital: Ouagadougou
- Area: 274,200 square km
- Population: 20,107,509
- Landlocked by: Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Niger, Mali and Togo
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Burundi
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Central Africa
- Capital: Bujumbura
- Area: 27,834 square km
- Population: 10,524,117
- Landlocked by: Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda
Central African Republic
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Central Africa
- Capital: Bangui
- Area: 622,984 square km
- Population: 4,594,621
- Landlocked by: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, South Sudan and Sudan
Chad
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Central Africa
- Capital: N'Djamena
- Area: 1,284,000 square km
- Population: 13,670,084
- Landlocked by: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Libya, Nigeria and Sudan
Ethiopia
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Central Africa
- Capital: Addis Ababa
- Area: 1,104,300 square km
- Population: 102,403,196
- Landlocked by: Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya, Sudan, Somalia and South Sudan
Lesotho
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Southern Africa
- Capital: Maseru
- Area: 30,355 square km
- Population: 2,203,821
- Landlocked by: South Africa
Malawi
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Southeast Africa
- Capital: Lilongwe
- Area: 118,484 square km
- Population: 18,091,575
- Landlocked by: Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia
Mali
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Central Africa
- Capital: Bamako
- Area: 1,240,192 square km
- Population: 14,517,176
- Landlocked by: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal
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Niger
Photo: wikipedia.org
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- Location: Central Africa
- Capital: Niamey
- Area: 1,267,000 square km
- Population: 20,672,987
- Landlocked by: Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Libya, Mali and Nigeria
Rwanda
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Central Africa
- Capital: Kigali
- Area: 26,338 square km
- Population: 11,262,564
- Landlocked by: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda
South Sudan
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Central Africa
- Capital: Juba
- Area: 619,745 square km
- Population: 12,230,730
- Landlocked by: Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda
Swaziland
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Southern Africa
- Capital: Lobamba (legislative) / Mbabane (executive)
- Area: 17,364 square km
- Population: 1,343,098
- Landlocked by: Mozambique and South Africa
Uganda
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Central Africa
- Capital: Kampala
- Area: 241,038 square km
- Population: 41,487,965
- Landlocked by: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan and Tanzania
Zambia
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Southern Africa
- Capital: Lusaka
- Area: 752,618 square km
- Population: 16,591,390
- Landlocked by: Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe
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Zimbabwe
Photo: wikipedia.org
- Location: Southern Africa
- Capital: Harare
- Area: 390,757 square km
- Population: 16,150,362
- Landlocked by: Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia
As you can see, landlocked countries can be big and small, and they can be landlocked by lots of countries or even just one. We hope you have been able to learn something new about African countries.
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Source: Legit.ng
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