Africa has 16 landlocked countries, out of 44 worldwide. No other continent has more: Europe has 14 (or 16, counting the Caucasus), Asia has 12, South America has 2 and North America and Oceania have none. The African cluster is a legacy of borders drawn in Europe in the 1880s with little regard for who could reach the coast.
The 16, by region
- Sahel and West Africa: Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad.
- East Africa and the Horn: Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi.
- Central Africa: Central African Republic.
- Southern Africa: Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho.
Ethiopia: landlocked since 1993
Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the world, with well over 120 million people. It has not always been landlocked. When Eritrea won independence in 1993 after a 30-year war, Ethiopia lost its entire Red Sea coastline, including the ports of Massawa and Assab. It now routes most of its trade through Djibouti, and access to a seaport remains one of the country's central strategic concerns.
Two countries entirely surrounded by one neighbour
Lesotho is completely enclosed by South Africa — the only country in the world surrounded by just one other country besides the Vatican and San Marino (both enclosed by Italy). Eswatini is nearly the same case, bordered by South Africa on three sides and Mozambique on the fourth. Both are among the smallest countries on the continent.
Why it matters
Landlocked countries depend on a neighbour's cooperation, roads and ports to trade with the wider world, which raises freight costs and shipping times and leaves them exposed to a neighbour's politics. Studies consistently find landlocked developing countries grow more slowly than coastal ones. Regional trade blocs, cross-border rail links and port-access treaties — Zambia and Zimbabwe using Beira and Dar es Salaam, Uganda and Rwanda using Mombasa — are attempts to soften that disadvantage. Africa has no double-landlocked country: the only two in the world are Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan.
Landlocked Central and Southern Africa is dense with shared borders — a good region to build a long chain of neighbouring countries.
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