Curated playlist

Least developed countries

TanzaniaTanzania's name was invented in a newspaper contest. Mohammed Iqbal Dar won by blending Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
TuvaluA deacon caught in a storm drifted for eight weeks and brought Christianity to Tuvalu.
DjiboutiDjibouti, a tiny African country, has the United States, France, Japan and China all paying to keep soldiers there.
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…
SenegalSenegal is named for a river, not the ocean it faces. Where the river's name came from is still debated.
MauritaniaNear the town of Ouadane, on the Adrar Plateau in Mauritania, the desert floor is marked by a set of concentric rings. From above, the formation looks like a giant eye. It is called the Richat Structure, and it has been dubbed the Eye of…
HaitiHaiti is the only country in history established by a slave revolt.
CambodiaCambodia's Tonle Sap lake swells to nearly ten times its dry-season size each year.
EritreaEritrea takes its name from a Greek word for red. Ancient Greek speakers called the Red Sea the Erythraean Sea, and the country at its southern end borrowed that old label. Italian colonial officials made the name official in 1890, when…
Sierra LeoneSierra Leone is named for a line of mountains that Portuguese sailors saw from the water in 1462. The explorer Pedro de Sintra mapped that stretch of the West African coast and called the heights Serra Leoa, which means lioness mountains.…
Democratic Republic of the CongoThe Democratic Republic of the Congo holds 80 percent of the world's cobalt reserves.
KiribatiKiribati has only 811 square kilometres of land, yet its islands are scattered across such a vast stretch of the central Pacific that the country reaches into all four hemispheres. No other nation can say that. Its islands straddle both…
LaosBetween 1964 and 1973, American planes dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos.
SudanNubians in Sudan beat back Arab invaders in 641 and again in 652. They were one of the few peoples to defeat the Arabs.
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…
LesothoLesotho is a country whose lowest ground sits 1400 metres above sea level, the highest lowest point of any nation on Earth. It is also the only independent state anywhere that lies entirely above 1000 metres. About 2.3 million people live…
EthiopiaEthiopia stayed independent while most of Africa fell to European rule. Its army beat Italy at Adwa in 1896.
AfghanistanPersians, Mongols, British, Soviets and Americans all marched into Afghanistan, and each marched out.
Solomon IslandsThe Solomon Islands are named for a biblical king who had no connection to them. Mapmakers imagined Bible gold there.
The GambiaThe Gambia is the smallest country on the African mainland, and in 1964 its prime minister wrote a letter to protect a single word. Dawda Jawara asked a British committee on geographical names to let the country keep the definite article…
MozambiqueIn 1995, Mozambique joined the Commonwealth of Nations. At the time, it was the only member that had never been part of the British Empire. Its traffic even keeps to the left, like that of its Commonwealth neighbours, although no British…
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…
NepalIn September 2025, protests over a social media ban in Nepal forced the prime minister to resign.
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…
Timor-LesteOn the 20th of May 2002, Timor-Leste became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century. Its official name is the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, and many people still call it East Timor. The country is oddly assembled. It holds…
BangladeshBangladesh became a country only on the 16th of December 1971. Its land was once called the breadbasket of India.
MyanmarMyanmar has two names, and choosing between them is a political statement. The military renamed Burma in 1989.
UgandaUganda has the lowest median age of any country in the world, just 15 years. Its population grew from 9.5 million people in 1969 to 34.9 million in 2014. By the latest census figures, 49.5 per cent of Ugandans were under the age of 18. The…