Indonesia:

Region: South-Eastern Asia

Capital: Jakarta

Official Language/s: Indonesian

Population: 219883000

Currency: Rupiah

Government: Presidential Republic

Geography: Indonesia is made up of 17,508 islands however only 6,000 of these are inhabited. Indonesia shares borders with Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines to the north and Australia to the south across narrow straits of water. The capital, Jakarta, is the nation’s largest city. Due to it’s location on the edges of three tectonic plates it is subject to many volcanoes and frequent earthquakes. Indonesia has at least 150 active volcanoes with volcanic ash being a major contributor to the high agricultural fertility in Java and Bali

Demographics: The national population is around 222 million with around 130 million people living on the island of Java. The population is expected to swell to around 315 million by 2035, based on the current annual growth rate of 1.25%. There are over 300 ethnic groups in Indonesia with most of the local languages belong to Austronesian linguistic family. Official estimates state that there are nearly 2 million ethnic Chinese in Indonesia with the Chinese Indonesian population accounting for 3 % of the total Indonesian population.

Religion: Despite religious freedom being protected by the Indonesian constitution the government officially recognizes only six religions. These include Islam, Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Whilst not an Islamic state, Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation with almost 86.1% of the population identifying as Muslim. Minority religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism remain defining influences in Indonesian culture.

Foreign Relations: In recetn times Indonesia’s foreign relations have been focused on economic and political cooperation with Western nations. It maintains a close relationship with its Asian neighbors and is a founding member of ASEAN and the East Asia Summit. Since 1950 Indonesia has been a member of the United Nations since 1950 and is signatory to the ASEAN Free Trade Area agreemenas well as the WTO. Since 1966 Indonesia has received humanitarian and development aid from the United States, western Europe, Australia, and Japan.

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