Curated playlist

Countries and territories where French is an official language

DjiboutiDjibouti, a tiny African country, has the United States, France, Japan and China all paying to keep soldiers there.
MauritiusMauritius had no people at all until sailors, thought to be Arab, reached it around 975.
Burkina FasoIn 1984, Captain Thomas Sankara renamed Upper Volta as Burkina Faso. The new name blends words from two local languages.
NigerNiger is a landlocked country in West Africa, and more than 80 percent of its land lies in the Sahara. Yet it takes its name from a river, and nobody can say for certain where the river's name came from. The geographer Ptolemy described a…
VanuatuOn the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, villagers of the Yaohnanen tribe revere Britain's Prince Philip as a god. Their belief rests on an ancient story about the pale-skinned son of a mountain spirit. According to the tale, he ventured across…
SenegalSenegal is named for a river, not the ocean it faces. Where the river's name came from is still debated.
New CaledoniaNew Caledonia lies 16,100 kilometres from Metropolitan France, yet its residents vote for the French president and live under French law. The territory is a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, 220 kilometres southwest of…
HaitiHaiti is the only country in history established by a slave revolt.
French GuianaFrench Guiana, known as Guyane in French, is 98.9 percent forest, and much of that forest is primeval rainforest. Yet it is an overseas department and region of France, and its currency is the euro. It sits on the northern coast of South…
RéunionRéunion holds the world records for the heaviest rainfall over periods of 12, 24, 72 and 96 hours, including 1.8 metres in 24 hours. This small island in the Indian Ocean lies about 679 km east of Madagascar and 175 km southwest of…
Democratic Republic of the CongoThe Democratic Republic of the Congo holds 80 percent of the world's cobalt reserves.
MadagascarMadagascar appears on a map drawn by Muhammad al-Idrisi in 1154 under the name Gesira Malai, Arabic for Malay island. That is a strange label for a place off the southeastern coast of Africa. Today the Republic of Madagascar is the world's…
CanadaCanada's name began as a word for a village. In 1535, locals used it to point Jacques Cartier to Stadacona.
FranceFrance may be named after a tax privilege. One suggestion says only Franks were exempt from taxes.
WalloniaBy the 19th century, Wallonia ranked second in industry for its size, behind only the United Kingdom.
RwandaThe name Rwanda comes from Ku-aanda, a word meaning "expansion" or "spreading out from the centre". Today the country feels anything but spread out. About 14 million people share 26338 square kilometres, which makes Rwanda the 21st most…
CameroonIn 1472, Portuguese sailors reached the coast of Central Africa and found the Wouri River teeming with shrimp. They called it Rio dos Camarões, the river of shrimps, after the Cameroon ghost shrimp, Lepidophthalmus turneranus. English bent…
BelgiumBelgium once went 589 days without a formal government, a world record at the time.
Ivory CoastIvory Coast supplies more cocoa beans than any other country. It has also endured two civil wars and a coup.
BrusselsBrussels has more ambassadors and journalists than Washington D.C. It is also the EU's de facto capital.
ChadChad is a landlocked country in Central Africa, and its capital, N'Djamena, lies 1060 km from the nearest seaport, Douala in Cameroon. That distance, together with a largely desert climate, gave the country a bleak nickname: the "Dead…
QuebecQuebec's 1995 independence vote failed by only 50.6% to 49.4%. Over 90% of anglophones voted no.
SwitzerlandSwitzerland's 1847 civil war lasted less than a month and killed fewer than 100 people. Most deaths were friendly fire.
SeychellesSeychelles, a country of tropical islands scattered across the Indian Ocean, was almost seized by mercenaries in 1981. A team of 43 South African mercenaries, led by Mike Hoare, flew in disguised as holidaying rugby players. Their goal was…