Liberia 🇱🇷

Liberia lies in Western Africa, part of Africa. Its full official name is Republic of Liberia. Government sits in Monrovia.

The land area is 111,369 km², which ranks it 104th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Honduras and just ahead of Bulgaria. For scale, it is a little larger than Iceland.

The population is about 5.6 million, placing it 117th of 249 by population — between Finland above it and Norway below. Among the 17 entries in Western Africa it ranks 11th by area and 12th by population.

The coordinates the dataset gives are 6.5° N, 9.5° W, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 724 km from the equator, in what geographers would call the equatorial belt.

Ethiopia, Venezuela and South Sudan sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

It borders 3 neighbours: Guinea, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone. The largest of them by area is Ivory Coast, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 55.3 million people.

It has both a coastline and land borders, which is the most common arrangement of all.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 50 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

Someone from Liberia is a Liberian.

English is the only official language. Another 90 entries list English too — among them American Samoa, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda and Australia.

Against Africa as a whole it is the 37th most populous of 59 entries, and it accounts for 1.2% of everyone living in Western Africa.

The Liberian dollar (LRD) is used only in Liberia among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Liberia among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Zoom in from the world to Western Africa and Liberia sits 12th of 17 by population and 11th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Sierra Leone just above and Mauritania just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Nigeria is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Western Africa has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇸🇱 Sierra Leone
• 🇲🇷 Mauritania
• 🇳🇬 Nigeria

Put next to every other entry on this site, Liberia ranks 104th of 249 by area and 117th by population. That works out at 0.074% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.069% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Liberia in the size ordering are Honduras at 112,492 km² and Bulgaria at 110,879 km², against Liberia's 111,369 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Liberia averages 50 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 166th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Money there is the Liberian dollar ($, LRD). It is issued for Liberia alone.

Websites there use the .lr domain. Calls from overseas start with +231. Standard country codes: lr and LBR.

Monrovia is the city to remember for this country.

Liberia is one of the 192 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.