Nauru is the third-smallest country in the world and the smallest island nation. The whole place is 21 square kilometres - about the size of a small town. There’s no official capital because the country is too tiny for one to be needed.
For most of the 20th century, Nauru was unbelievably rich. The island is basically a giant pile of phosphate rock, formed from millions of years of seabird droppings, which is incredibly valuable as fertiliser. At its peak in the 1970s, Nauru had one of the highest incomes per person of any country on Earth.
But the phosphate ran out. Decades of mining left most of the island a moonscape of jagged limestone pinnacles, and the government’s investment fund collapsed. Today most Nauruans live around the narrow coast, and the country has had to rebuild its economy almost from scratch.
