Country Information
| Official Name: | Lesotho |
| Capital: | Maseru |
| Area: | 30,355 km² |
| Languages: | Sesotho, English |
| Independence: | 1966-10-04 |
| Leader: | Letsie III |
About Lesotho
Lesotho is located in the southernmost reach of the African continent, where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet at the Cape. Its capital is Maseru, and it covers roughly 30,355 square kilometres. The population of about 2.3 million makes it one of 9 countries that make up Southern Africa. Lesotho is one of the smaller members of the Southern Africa group by population. The country marks its modern statehood from 1966.
Southern Africa hosts the most industrialised single economy on the continent in South Africa, alongside resource-rich neighbours and several smaller economies that are deeply integrated with it through customs unions and labour movement. English is the most common official language, and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is the principal regional organisation. Mining, manufacturing, agriculture, and tourism are core to the region's output. Within that setting, The working official languages are sesotho and english, and the legal-tender currency is the Lesotho Loti (LSL) (see Africa's currency arrangements).
The figures above are sourced from World Bank, IMF, UN agency and national statistics-office releases. Reported nominal GDP for Lesotho is about US$3 billion. Population growth is currently estimated at about 0.8% per year, which influences how quickly the labour force, school cohorts and urban demand shift over a decade. The longer-form note on what growth rate hides is on reading African demographic data. At an urbanisation rate of about 30%, Lesotho is still predominantly rural, with cities growing faster than the countryside. Life expectancy at birth is reported at 56.0 years, and the adult literacy rate at about 79% — figures that summarise decades of investment in health systems and basic education.
How to read these figures
Country indicators on Africa Center are point-in-time estimates that are revised when new census or survey data is published. GDP is reported here as nominal US dollars at current exchange rates, which is the format most widely used by international institutions for cross-country comparison; for the difference between this and the purchasing-power-parity variant, and why GDP rankings reorder between releases, see reading African economic data. Per-capita figures divide GDP by population and are most useful when read alongside the absolute total. Definitions for every indicator are in the glossary; the rules we follow when sources disagree are written up in the methodology.
For the full regional context — neighbouring economies, shared languages, regional organisations — see the Southern Africa overview. To compare Lesotho with other countries on the continent, browse the full country directory or open the interactive map.
Last reviewed: 28 April 2026. Figures are revised when underlying source organisations publish new releases.