The landlocked countries, and why it matters

Forty-four countries have no coastline. That is more than a fifth of the world, and the label covers an unusually wide range: Switzerland and Austria are among the wealthiest countries on Earth, while a majority of the world's least developed countries are landlocked. The condition is not destiny, but it is not neutral either.

Where they are

Landlocked countries cluster, because the geography that produces them clusters.

Europe has the most, and they are mostly small and mountainous: Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Belarus, Moldova, Serbia, North Macedonia, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino and Vatican City.

Africa has sixteen, the largest concentration of landlocked countries with limited infrastructure anywhere: Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini.

Asia has twelve, including the whole of former Soviet Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

South America has two — Bolivia and Paraguay — and North America and Oceania have none at all, which is itself a useful thing to know for a quiz.

Doubly landlocked: only two

A country is doubly landlocked if it has no coastline and every one of its neighbours is also landlocked — so you must cross at least two borders to reach the sea. Exactly two countries qualify.

Liechtenstein sits between Switzerland and Austria, both landlocked. Uzbekistan is bordered by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, all landlocked.

Uzbekistan's case comes with an asterisk that is worth understanding rather than memorising: Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan both border the Caspian Sea. Whether that counts depends on whether the Caspian is a sea or a lake — a question with real legal consequences for oil rights, and one that has been argued for decades. Under the usual reading it is an enclosed lake with no outlet to the ocean, so Uzbekistan stays doubly landlocked.

What it actually costs

Sea freight is dramatically cheaper than road or rail per tonne-kilometre. A landlocked country's exports must cross at least one border before reaching a port, and that adds cost in several compounding ways: transit fees, customs delays at an additional frontier, and dependence on a neighbour's infrastructure and goodwill.

The dependence is the sharpest part. A landlocked country cannot unilaterally fix its access to world markets. If the transit neighbour has a border dispute, a war, a strike or simply a poorly maintained railway, the landlocked country absorbs the consequence without recourse. Ethiopia lost its entire coastline when Eritrea became independent in 1993, and its trade has depended on the port of Djibouti ever since.

The United Nations maintains a specific category — Landlocked Developing Countries — precisely because the combination of no coast and limited infrastructure produces a distinct and persistent disadvantage. Freight costs for these countries commonly run well above the global average as a share of import value.

Why Europe's landlocked countries are rich anyway

Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg are all landlocked and all wealthy, which shows the handicap is about access rather than coastline as such.

Three things make the difference. Their neighbours are wealthy, stable and cooperative, so transit is routine rather than fraught. Europe has dense, well-maintained rail and road networks and navigable rivers — the Rhine and the Danube function as working freight corridors. And their economies lean toward high-value, low-bulk output: finance, pharmaceuticals, precision engineering. If your export weighs very little relative to its value, the cost of getting it to a port hardly matters.

Compare a country exporting copper ore or cotton, where transport is a large fraction of the delivered price, and the difference becomes obvious. Being landlocked is expensive in proportion to how heavy your exports are.

The workarounds

Countries have found various ways to soften the problem.

River access. Paraguay reaches the Atlantic via the Paraguay and Paraná rivers and maintains a substantial river fleet. Moldova has a few hundred metres of Danube frontage at Giurgiulești, enough for a working river port.

Treaty rights. International law provides landlocked states a right of access to the sea and freedom of transit, though implementation depends on bilateral agreements.

Leased port facilities. Several African landlocked countries operate dedicated terminals inside neighbouring ports, run under long-term agreement.

And then there is Bolivia, which lost its Pacific coastline to Chile in the War of the Pacific in 1879 and has never accepted it. It still maintains a navy — operating on Lake Titicaca and the country's rivers — and marks a Day of the Sea every year. It took the case to the International Court of Justice, which ruled in 2018 that Chile is under no obligation to negotiate sovereign access. The navy remains.

Testing yourself

Landlocked status is one of the more useful things to know about a country, because it constrains so much else — trade, politics, which neighbours matter most. The country quiz works from clues including continent and currency, and the map quiz puts the geography itself in front of you, which is the fastest way to notice which countries have no way out.