Samoa

Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa, is an island country in Polynesia in the South Pacific Ocean, about 64 kilometers west of American Samoa, 889 kilometers northeast of Tonga and 4,190 kilometers southwest of Hawaii, comprising the two main islands of Savai'i and Upolu along with the smaller inhabited islands of Manono and Apolima and several uninhabited islets, with a total land area of 2,831 square kilometers. Apia is the capital and largest city of a country whose population was 205,557 at the November 2021 census, 92.6 percent ethnically Samoan and 97.9 percent Christian, the state religion. The Lapita people settled the islands about 3,500 years ago; German colonial rule from 1900 to 1914 gave way to New Zealand administration, and the territory gained independence on 1 January 1962 as Western Samoa, adopting its current name on 4 July 1997. Samoa is a unitary parliamentary democracy whose head of state, the O le Ao o le Malo, is Tuimalealiifano Va'aletoa Sualauvi II, with La'auli Leuatea Schmidt serving as prime minister since 2025.