How many landlocked countries are there in Africa?

Out of Africa’s 55 countries, 16 of them are landlocked: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, South Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In other words, about a third of the continent is made up of countries that have no access to the ocean or sea.

Of Africa’s landlocked countries, 14 of them are ranked “low” on the Human Development Index (HDI), a statistic that takes into account factors such as life expectancy, education, and income per capita.

A country’s level of access to water can have an enormous effect on its economy. Being landlocked is more problematic for importing and exporting goods because it is much cheaper to transport products over water than over land. Land transport also takes longer. These factors make it more difficult for landlocked countries to participate in the global economy, and landlocked nations thus grow more slowly than countries that have water access.