Sudan 🇸🇩

Sudan lies in Northern Africa, part of Africa. In formal use it is Republic of the Sudan. Khartoum is the capital.

Around 50.4 million people live there, placing it 30th of 249 by population — between South Korea above it and Uganda below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 2nd of 7 in size and 2nd in population.

By land area it covers 1,886,068 km², which ranks it 17th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Indonesia and just ahead of Libya. For scale, it is almost exactly the same size as Indonesia.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 27 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

Someone from Sudan is a Sudanese.

Officially it is multilingual, listing Arabic and English. Arabic, the first listed, is shared with 24 other entries worldwide.

Inside Africa it places 8th of 59 by population, and it accounts for 19% of everyone living in Northern Africa.

Zoom in from the world to Northern Africa and Sudan sits 2nd of 7 by population and 2nd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Egypt just above and Algeria just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇪🇬 Egypt
• 🇩🇿 Algeria
• 🇪🇬 Egypt

Its reference point sits at 15.0° north and 30.0° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 1,670 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.

7 countries share a land border with it: the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya and South Sudan. The largest of them by area is Libya, while the most populous is Ethiopia. Together those neighbours hold about 297.1 million people.

Unlike its landlocked neighbours it reaches the sea directly, while also sharing land frontiers.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Sudan ranks 17th of 249 by area and 30th by population. That works out at 1.3% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.62% 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 Sudan in the size ordering are Indonesia at 1,904,569 km² and Libya at 1,759,540 km², against Sudan's 1,886,068 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Sudan averages 27 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 194th 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 Sudanese pound (SDG) is used only in Sudan 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, Sudan 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.

Money there is the Sudanese pound (PT, SDG). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to Sudan.

Websites there use the .sd domain. Calls from overseas start with +249. Standard country codes: sd and SDN.

Khartoum is the city to remember for this country.

Sudan 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.