Seychelles 🇸🇨

Filed under Africa and more precisely Eastern Africa, Seychelles is a sovereign state. The long form of the name is Republic of Seychelles. Victoria is the capital.

By land area it covers 452 km², which ranks it 203rd of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Palau and just ahead of Curaçao. That makes it about half again the size of Malta.

Around 121,354 people live there, placing it 193rd of 249 by population — between Kiribati above it and Grenada below. Within Eastern Africa alone it is the 18th largest of 20 and the 19th most populous.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Seychelles ranks 203rd of 249 by area and 193rd by population. That works out at less than a thousandth of a percent of the combined land area of all 249 entries and less than a thousandth of a percent 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 Seychelles in the size ordering are Palau at 459 km² and Curaçao at 444 km², against Seychelles's 452 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Seychelles averages 268 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 53rd 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.

The coordinates the dataset gives are 4.6° S, 55.7° E, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 510 km from the equator, in what geographers would call the equatorial belt.

Indonesia and Papua New Guinea sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

There is no land frontier at all — every boundary it has is a coastline. That puts it among the 85 entries of 249 here with no land neighbours, which shapes how it trades and who it deals with.

Seychelles has no land border with any country, which changes what "nearby" means. Measured centre to centre in a straight line, the closest other entry on this site is Mayotte, roughly 1,470 km away. These are approximate distances between representative points, not the shortest crossing between two shorelines, so treat them as a sense of scale rather than a sailing chart.

No land border also means no land crossing: everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air. That single fact drives a lot of what follows on this page, from how goods reach the shops to why Seychelles's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Spread across 452 km², that works out at about 268 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

Officially it is multilingual, listing English, French and Seychellois Creole. Seychellois Creole is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Seychelles. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

The demonym is Seychellois, so residents are Seychellois.

Inside Africa it places 57th of 59 by population, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in Eastern Africa.

Zoom in from the world to Eastern Africa and Seychelles sits 19th of 20 by population and 18th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Mayotte just above and British Indian Ocean Territory just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇾🇹 Mayotte
• 🇮🇴 British Indian Ocean Territory
• 🇪🇹 Ethiopia

The Seychellois rupee (SCR) is used only in Seychelles 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, Seychelles 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.

The currency is the Seychellois rupee (₨, SCR). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to Seychelles.

Victoria is the city to remember for this country.

Its internet country code is .sc. Calls from overseas start with +248. In ISO terms it is sc in two letters and SYC in three.

As a sovereign state it is among the 192 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.