Zambia 🇿🇲

Zambia is a country in Eastern Africa, one of the 20 entries this site files under that subregion. Treaties and official documents call it Republic of Zambia. Government sits in Lusaka.

The land area is 752,612 km², which ranks it 40th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Chile and just ahead of Myanmar. That makes it a fraction smaller than Türkiye.

The population is about 21.3 million, placing it 63rd of 249 by population — between Malawi above it and Kazakhstan below. Within Eastern Africa alone it is the 4th largest of 20 and the 8th most populous.

Zambia has no coastline of its own, so every ship-borne import and export crosses somebody else's border first. The good news is that the sea is only one frontier away: DR Congo, Tanzania, Angola, Mozambique and Namibia have coastline, which makes them the obvious routes for freight heading to a port.

That geography has practical consequences. Landlocked countries carry higher freight costs than coastal ones because goods change hands, transport mode and jurisdiction more often, and because a neighbour's road, rail or customs problem becomes Zambia's problem too. It is also why transit agreements with bordering states, and access to their ports, tend to matter more in Zambia's foreign policy than the distance on a map would suggest.

Of the countries on Zambia's borders, Botswana, Malawi and Zimbabwe are landlocked as well, so a route in that direction only moves the problem along. The remaining borders are the ones that lead, eventually, to salt water.

Coastal countries on the border:

• 🇨🇩 DR Congo
• 🇹🇿 Tanzania
• 🇦🇴 Angola
• 🇲🇿 Mozambique
• 🇳🇦 Namibia

The coordinates the dataset gives are 15.0° S, 30.0° E, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 1,670 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Bolivia, Vanuatu and French Polynesia sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

8 countries share a land border with it: Angola, Botswana, DR Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. The largest of them by area is DR Congo, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 294.2 million people.

This is one of the world's landlocked countries. That is true of 45 of the 249 entries here, and it means every shipment in or out has to cross someone else's border first. 3 of its neighbours, Botswana, Malawi and Zimbabwe, are landlocked too. You can see the full picture on the landlocked countries page.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 28 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 91 per square kilometre.

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

The demonym is Zambian, so residents are Zambians.

Against Africa as a whole it is the 22nd most populous of 59 entries, and it accounts for 4.4% of everyone living in Eastern Africa.

Zoom in from the world to Eastern Africa and Zambia sits 8th of 20 by population and 4th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Malawi just above and Somalia 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.

• 🇲🇼 Malawi
• 🇸🇴 Somalia
• 🇪🇹 Ethiopia

It uses the Zambian kwacha (ZK, ZMW). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Zambia, the answer is Lusaka.

The top-level domain is .zm. The international dialling code is +260. In ISO terms it is zm in two letters and ZMB in three.

Zambia 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.

The Zambian kwacha (ZMW) is used only in Zambia 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, Zambia 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.