AFRICA

Libya

A vast North African country where the Sahara swallows more than nine-tenths of the land and the Mediterranean guards spectacular Roman ruins. Libya packs some of Earth's most extreme desert heat.

WHAT THE FLAG MEANS ◢

Three horizontal bands of red, black and green, the black one as wide as the other two together and bearing a white crescent with a five-pointed white star between its two ends. Article 3 of the Constitutional Declaration prescribes exactly that, at twice the length of the width, and assigns none of it a meaning. The flag was restored in 2011 from the independence flag of 1951; its colours are conventionally associated with the historic regions of Libya and its crescent and star with Islam.

Libya FACTS ◢

Capital	Tripoli
Continent	Africa
Population	7,458,555 (2025)
Area	1,759,541 km²
Population density	4/km²
Currency	Libyan dinar (LYD)
Official language	Arabic
Calling code	+218
Internet TLD	.ly
Time zone	UTC+02:00
Drives on the	Right
ISO codes	LY / LBY

DID YOU KNOW? ◢

Over 90% of the country is desert, part of the great Sahara.
Leptis Magna is one of the best-preserved Roman cities anywhere in the world.
It once claimed the record for the highest air temperature ever measured, though that century-old reading was later disqualified as unreliable.
The Man-Made River, a colossal network of pipes, carries ancient groundwater across the desert to its cities.