Country · Africa
Western Sahara
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
Western Sahara is a territory in Northern Africa. About 652 000 people live there, in an area of 266 000 square kilometres. Its capital city is El Aaiún.
The countries of the world do not agree about Western Sahara. Morocco controls most of the territory and claims it; the Polisario Front claims it too and declared the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic there in 1976. The United Nations lists Western Sahara as a territory whose future is unsettled.
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Where is Western Sahara?
Western Sahara lies in Northern Africa, on the continent of Africa.
It sits in the northern half of the world, roughly 2 727 km from the equator.
Its coastline is about 1 110 km long.
It shares a border with 3 countries: Algeria, Mauritania and Morocco.
How big is Western Sahara?
Western Sahara covers 266 000 square kilometres.
That is about 6.4 times the size of Switzerland.
If everybody spread out evenly, there would be about 2.5 people on every square kilometre.
That is emptier than the world average of roughly 60 people per square kilometre.
Who lives in Western Sahara?
About 652 000 people live in Western Sahara.
People here speak Berber, Hassaniya and Spanish.
They pay with the Algerian dinar, Moroccan dirham and Mauritanian ouguiya.
On average, people born here can expect to live about 50 years.
The land of Western Sahara
The land of Western Sahara sits on average 256 metres above sea level.
Its coast runs for about 1 110 km. Walking it end to end, at twenty kilometres a day, would take roughly 56 days.
It lies between the tropics and the poles, which is the single biggest reason its weather is the way it is.
What makes Western Sahara different?
Websites from here often end in .eh.
Western Sahara and the rest of the world
Out of every thousand people alive on Earth, about one lives in Western Sahara.
It takes up about 0.2 % of all the land that countries stand on.
Western Sahara and its neighbours
Algeria, its largest neighbour, is about 9 times bigger.
Algeria has more people: 42.2 million against 652 000.
A country, or a territory?
Western Sahara is not an independent country but a territory. It has its own name, its own borders and often its own laws, but another country speaks for it abroad — it holds no seat of its own at the United Nations, for instance.
That is more common than it sounds. There are dozens of such places around the world: some sit far from the country they belong to, some right beside it. A few govern themselves almost completely and hand over only defence and foreign policy; others are held more closely. How much a territory decides for itself is settled case by case, never by one rule.
On this site territories get a page of their own, because children look them up and because other pages link to them. They are left out of the record lists, though: those rank only members of the United Nations, so that a ranking never mixes countries with places belonging to somebody else.
Its nearest neighbour by land is Algeria.
How big is Western Sahara compared with the United States?
- The United States is about 35 times as big as Western Sahara: 9 372 610 km² against 266 000 km².
- Western Sahara and the United Kingdom are almost the same size: 266 000 km² against 242 900 km².
Questions children ask
What is the capital of Western Sahara?
The capital of Western Sahara is El Aaiún.
How many people live in Western Sahara?
About 652 000 people live in Western Sahara. (Source: World Bank, 2018.)
Which countries border Western Sahara?
Western Sahara borders Algeria, Mauritania and Morocco — 3 neighbours in total.
How big is Western Sahara?
Western Sahara covers 266 000 square kilometres. That is about 6.4 times the size of Switzerland.
Which continent is Western Sahara in?
Western Sahara is in Africa, in the part called Northern Africa.
Where these numbers come from
Borders and outlines: Natural Earth. Names, capitals, areas, languages and currencies: ISO 3166 data (world-countries). Population: World Bank, 2018. Every derived figure on this page (ranks, density, distance from the equator) is calculated from those values.
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