How many countries are there in Africa?

The UN membership roster contains 54 African states, and that of the African Union contains 53. While the AU list includes suspended members, it does not include a count for Morocco, who has decided to stay out of the AU. Thus AU’s implied total can also be said to be 54. Of these, 48 states are found on the actual continent, while 6 are island nations.

However, Africa is about to get a brand new country. Within less than two weeks, South Sudan will hold a referendum on whether or not to secede from the rest of Sudan. If it does secede, which currently seems likely, it would mean that the new total will soon be 55, right? Well, no, because the current total of 54 is true only to some degree.

Before I go on: what’s a country, anyway? I’m going to be somewhat untechnical here and use ‘country’, ‘nation’ and ‘state’ pretty much interchangeably. More precisely, I’ll count as a country any defined territory with a sovereign and accepted (or at least obeyed) government/leadership, a seemingly stable and functioning governing infrastructure, plus a set of recognised and enforced laws by which the territory is governed.

So how many are there, then?

53 or 54 = official totals

For a long time, the standard answer has been either 53 or 54, depending on whether one counts the Sahrawi Republic or West Sahara as a country or not. The Sahrawi Republic was briefly independent in the 1970s, but has since then been controlled by Morocco, who currently occupies roughly three quarters of the entire Sahrawian territory. There have been negotiations and plans for either full independence (demanded by the Sahrawi leadership) or merely some degree of autonomy (the Moroccan standpoint). But nothing seems to be happening. Nonetheless, the Sahrawi Republic is recognised as a country by many other countries, as well as the UN and the AU, both of whom have accepted the Sahrawi Republic as a member state (which, incidentally, is also the reason why Morocco refuses to be a member of the AU).

Either way, the current official total of 54 (or 53 if you’re Morocco) is not the full story, irrespective of how one counts Sahrawi. Both numbers have in fact been obsolete for many years due to the break-up of Somalia in the 1990s.

56 (or 57) = another total

As has been widely reported in news bulletins for several years now, Somalia broke up during the 1990s. Yet most international bodies, such as the UN and the AU, still regard and count Somalia as a single country, with its recognised successor being the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia seated at Mogadishu.

However, the Transitional Federal Government governs only small parts of what used to be Somalia. Other parts of the territory are controlled by others, such as Somaliland and Puntland, two unrecognised countries with fully functioning governments and administrations. In most respects, they look very much like regular countries, except they lack international recognition. Nonetheless, there is no reason not to count Somaliland and Puntland as de facto countries, since they act as sovereign polities independently of the Transitional Federal Government. Other putative states have either dissolved (as did the Northland State), been overtaken by others (e.g. Maakhir overtaken by Puntland and Jubaland overtaken by al-Shabaab; see below), or have recognised the authority of the Transitional Federal Government (as has Galmudug).

As the fight for some areas is still ongoing, it is difficult to make a reasoned assessment about the entire territory of former Somalia, let alone its future. This concerns in particular the southern parts, an area that is currently controlled by al-Shabaab, an organisation or movement labelled “terrorists” by some Western analysts. While Somaliland and Puntland can be counted as de facto sovereign countries, the al-Shabaab-controlled territory appears less like a functioning country. Be that as it may, the area is at least independently ruled, even though the political infrastructure seems less clear and formalised than we’d normally expect of a country. Still, I suppose it could potentially be counted as a “country” (of some sort) bringing the total to a possible 57.

57 (or 58) = current de facto total

As mentioned above, the current total, whatever one considers it to be, will soon be added with a new member, namely, South Sudan. At the moment, South Sudan has the same status as Somaliland and Puntland. That is, it is a sovereign territory with its own government and administration, albeit lacking proper international recognition. So even if it were not to achieve independence, we could still count it as a de facto African country.

Hence with South Sudan, be it recognised or not, we reach a total of 57 de facto African countries (or 58 if al-Shabaab were to be included).

63 (or even 64) = other potential totals

To most of the totals above, we could potentially add another six, namely, Spain, France, the UK, Portugal, Malta, and Yemen. Each of these countries rule over territories that lie on the African Tectonic Plate.

Spain controls Spanish North Africa and the Canary Islands. Spanish North Africa is the only European-controlled area on the mainland of Africa and consists of the cities Ceuta and Melilla, plus a scattering of tiny islands just outside the Moroccan coast. The areas have been claimed by Morocco, but Spain has persistently refused. France controls Réunion, Mayotte and a small number of uninhabited islands around Madagascar. The UK controls the island territories of St Helena, Ascension & Tristan da Cunha. Portugal controls Madeira, with surrounding small(er) islands. Yemen controls Soqotra, an island just outside the Horn of Africa. And finally, the entire country of Malta lies on the African Plate, even though by tradition it is and has been counted as European.

The territories in question are all governed independently of (other) African countries. They are demarkated on maps by (inter)national borders. However, the governments that rule them are seated outside Africa, either Europe (Spain, France, UK, Portugal, Malta) or Asia (Yemen). Still, the respective territories are geographically African, and therefore the countries that rule them could be counted as African. Were we to do so, the total would run up to 63 (or 64 with al-Shabaab).

Summary

In sum, then, the current total of de facto African countries is at least 57, which includes the unproblematic 53 plus Sahrawi, Somaliland, Puntland, and South Sudan. Of these, Sahrawi enjoyes international recognition and South Sudan is likely to do so soon. The total of 57 could potentially be boosted to 58 if we were to regard the al-Shabaab-controlled areas as constituting a country.

To either of these two totals, we can then make six further additions consisting of areas controlled by non-African governments, giving us a potential grand total of either 63 or 64.

	recognised:	54	= The Official 54, incl. 48 mainland and 6 island nations
	de facto:	57	= The Official 54 plus South Sudan, Somaliland, Puntland
			( 58 if al-Shabaab is included )
	potential:	63	= The above 57 plus Spain, France, the UK, Portugal, Malta, Yemen
			( 64 if al-Shabaab is included )

Personally, I’m going with 57.