Africa's Thin Countries

If you looked at a map of Africa, you may or may not have noticed that there are several small, very thin countries. While countries such as Lesotho and Sierra Leone are rather round, Africa is home to five extremely skinny countries. The West Africa region boasts the most with three: they are BENIN, GAMBIA*, and TOGO. East Africa has one country that is diagonally skinny: ERITREA, bordering the Red Sea and located north of Ethiopia. Located in Southern Africa, MALAWI is the remaining skinny country. It straddles the vertically oriented Lake Malawi and the Great Rift Valley.

* Gambia's north and south borders are on both sides of the horizontally flowing Gambia River