West Africa

About West Africa

West Africa is the bulge of the continent stretching from the Sahel southward to the Gulf of Guinea, encompassing the sixteen countries from Mauritania and Senegal in the west to Nigeria and the Niger Delta in the east, plus the island state of Cape Verde. It is the most populous of Africa's five regions and one of its most linguistically diverse.

People and languages

The region pairs old maritime kingdoms — Mali, Songhai, Asante, Benin, Oyo — with the colonial-era trading ports that became modern capitals: Dakar, Accra, Lagos, Abidjan, Monrovia. French and English mark the colonial split, and several countries pair an official European language with a widely-spoken West African one (Wolof in Senegal, Hausa across the Sahel, Yoruba and Igbo in Nigeria, Twi in Ghana). Religious affiliation is roughly split between Islam in the Sahel and a Christianity / traditional-religion mix along the coast.

Economy

West Africa's economic story is dominated by Nigeria, which alone accounts for nearly half of the region's nominal GDP and over half its population. Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana are major cocoa exporters, Senegal a regional services hub, and the Sahelian countries — Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger — are large agricultural and gold-producing economies despite being landlocked. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is the principal regional bloc; eight West African countries share the West African CFA franc, pegged to the euro.

How to read this regional view

Below you'll find a card for every West African country we cover. To see how the region compares with the other four — Population, GDP, area — return to the regions overview. To browse alphabetically across all 54 nations, see the full country directory.

Last reviewed: 28 April 2026. Figures on the country cards are revised when underlying source organisations publish new releases.