Samoa

Samoa is made of islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Coconut palms grow along the coasts. Coral reefs and shallow lagoons ring the islands.

Samoa is a country of nine islands in the central South Pacific Ocean, about 2,900 kilometers northeast of New Zealand. Only four of the islands have people living on them: Upolu, Savai'i, Manono and Apolima.

The capital is Apia, on Upolu. Samoan is the official language, and English is widely spoken too. The 2021 census counted 205,557 people. The photo shows a white-sand beach on Upolu in 2009, with palm trees and a shallow lagoon.

Samoa lies among the westernmost island countries of Polynesia, about 130 km west of American Samoa, 2,900 km northeast of New Zealand and 4,200 km southwest of Hawaii. Its nine islands west of longitude 171° W cover about 2,830 km² (Britannica); four are inhabited (Upolu, Savai'i, Manono, Apolima) and five are not.

The Samoa Bureau of Statistics' 2021 census counted 205,557 people (104,853 male, 100,704 female); a new census was under way in October 2026. Samoan became the official language under a 2014 act, while the constitution requires the legislature to work in both Samoan and English. The currency is the tala. The photo shows a beach on Upolu in 2009.

Apia is the capital city.

It is on the island of Upolu. Most people live in villages near the coast.

Apia, on the north coast of Upolu, is Samoa's only town. It is the main port and the center for trade, and about one in five Samoans lives there. Most other people live in coastal villages, as Samoans have since the islands were first settled.

Visitors come to see Fuipisia Falls, which drops about 55 meters, and Vailima, the last home of the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson. His house is now a museum.

Apia, on Upolu's northern coast, is the only town, the main port and the center for services and trade, with roughly one-fifth of the population; about four-fifths of Samoans are rural. Local government rests with more than 360 villages in 11 districts, five on Upolu and six on Savai'i.

Britannica lists Mulinu'u (site of the parliament and traditional meeting grounds), Fuipisia Falls (about 55 m) and Vailima among the main sights. Vailima, Robert Louis Stevenson's last home and for a time the head of state's residence, houses the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum (1990). The University of the South Pacific has its School of Agriculture at Alafua, near Apia, and the National University of Samoa opened in 1984.

Volcanoes made Samoa's islands.

Rainforest grows inland. It is warm all year, and it rains a lot.

Samoa's islands are rocky and were built by volcanoes. Savai'i, the biggest island, rises to 1,858 meters at Mount Silisili, a volcano near its center. Mount Matavanu on Savai'i last erupted from 1905 to 1911.

Rainforests and cloud forests grow inland, and nearly half the land is forest. It is warm all year, about 27 °C on average. The wet season lasts from about November to April, when strong storms can strike.

The islands were formed by volcanic activity that progressed from east to west within the past seven million years. Savai'i (1,707 km²) peaks at Mount Silisili, 1,858 m; Upolu (1,119 km²), 16 km east across the Apolima Strait, reaches 1,100 m at Mount Fito. Short, shallow rivers radiate from the central highlands, and coral reefs and lagoons ring the coasts except where lava cliffs meet the sea. Matavanu erupted intermittently in 1905–11.

Rainfall ranges from more than 2,540 mm on the northern and western coasts to 7,620 mm inland; temperatures stay between 23 and 30 °C. The volcanic soils are fertile but erode easily. Wildfires set to clear farmland in 1998 destroyed nearly one-fourth of Savai'i's forests.

Lots of birds live in Samoa.

The manumea is Samoa's national bird. It is a rare pigeon with a thick, curved beak.

More than 50 kinds of birds are found in Samoa. The only native mammals are bats, including flying foxes, which are endangered.

Samoa's national bird is the tooth-billed pigeon, called the manumea. Its thick, curved bill lets it eat hard fruits. It is critically endangered because of forest loss, hunting and animals people brought to the islands. The Samoa Conservation Society and the government's environment ministry are working to protect its remaining forest.

Britannica counts more than 50 bird species, at least 16 of them indigenous, and notes that the only native mammals are bats: endangered flying foxes and smaller species. Rats, wild cattle and pigs were introduced. Lizards, two boas, centipedes, scorpions and many insects make up much of the smaller fauna.

The tooth-billed pigeon or manumea (Didunculus strigirostris), the national bird, is a close relative of the extinct dodo and is listed as Critically Endangered. It has declined since the 1990s through deforestation, hunting and invasive species; an adult has never been clearly photographed in the wild, and none were reported between 2006 and 2012. The Samoa Conservation Society and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment monitor it. O Le Pupu-Pu'e National Park (1978), Samoa's first, covers about 28 km² of south-central Upolu.

Many Samoan homes are called fale. A fale has a roof but open sides.

People eat taro, breadfruit and fish. Sometimes whole villages play a game called kirikiti.

Samoans work to keep the fa'a Samoa, the Samoan way of life. Each extended family, or aiga, chooses at least one matai (chief) to lead it, and the matai meet in village councils. Most villages have a church, a meetinghouse and a green with fale around it: oval houses with open sides, where rolled palm-leaf mats can be let down against the weather.

Typical foods include taro, yams, breadfruit, fish and shellfish. Rugby is popular, and whole communities sometimes play kirikiti, a game like cricket with teams of any size.

About nine-tenths of people are ethnic Samoans, with Euronesians (mixed European and Polynesian ancestry) most of the rest. Samoan is thought to be among the oldest Polynesian languages and is related to Maori, Tahitian, Hawaiian and Tongan; many words name ocean currents, winds, stars and directions. Most Samoans are Christian; the Congregational Christian Church has a little under one-third of the population.

Many fale have given way to rectangular houses of timber or concrete block. Kava, made from a pepper plant, is drunk at social events, mainly by matai. Arts include music, the sāsā sitting dance, the fa'ataupati slap dance and the traditional waist-to-knee tattoo for young men, a tradition Samoans kept when missionaries ended it on other islands. Novelist Albert Wendt has written about the fa'a Samoa. Independence Day is celebrated on June 1–3.