Madagascar
Madagascar (officially Republic of Madagascar) is a country in Eastern Africa, with its capital at Antananarivo, and is home to roughly 32.0M people.
Its official languages are French, Malagasy; the currency in circulation is Malagasy ariary (Ar); people from here are called Malagasy.
- »Around 90% of its wildlife is found nowhere else on Earth.
- »It split from the African mainland roughly 165 million years ago and from India around 88 million years ago.
Madagascar straddles the Tropic of Capricorn.
Madagascar shares no land border with anything, so every approach is by sea or air. The closest other territories on file are Comoros (931 km), Mauritius (1,141 km) and Mozambique (1,201 km), measured centre to centre.
Antananarivo means 'city of the thousand', for the soldiers said to have guarded it. It is built across a long ridge of hills at around 1,280 m.
594,104 km² (229,385 sq mi), 44th largest of 198 countries and territories on file, almost exactly the size of Kenya.
Population 31,964,956, 49th of 198 on file. That averages 54 per km² (139 per sq mi).
The white and red are the colours of the Merina kingdom that ruled before colonisation; the green vertical band represents the coastal peoples.