Outline polygons for the world's 177 countries at small scale, with names, ISO codes, population and GDP estimates.
About
Admin-0 (country) boundaries at 1:110 million scale — detailed enough for a world map or choropleth, small enough to load instantly. Each of the 177 features carries dozens of attributes, including names in many languages, ISO 3166 codes, continent, region, and population and GDP estimates.
The zip holds an ESRI shapefile (.shp, .shx, .dbf, .prj). GeoPandas, QGIS, ogr2ogr and most GIS tools read it directly; convert it to GeoJSON for web maps.
Natural Earth shows boundaries as they exist on the ground (de facto); disputed areas are handled as described in the README inside the zip.
Source and licence
Natural Earth, a project supported by the North American Cartographic Information Society. Public domain — no permission is needed, though credit is appreciated.