Africa Map Quiz

The quiz names a country and you click it. You get three tries, and after the third miss the quiz shows the answer and moves on. Island nations too small to click get a ring target.

Start with the coast, finish inland

A reliable way to learn this map is to walk its coastline. Begin with the Mediterranean row: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt. Go down the Red Sea to Sudan, Eritrea and Djibouti, round the Horn with Somalia, then south through Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique to South Africa. Up the Atlantic side come Namibia and Angola, the short coast of the DR Congo, then the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon.

With the outline fixed, fill the landlocked interior. The Sahel row runs Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad. Below it come the Central African Republic and South Sudan, then Ethiopia in the east. Rwanda and Burundi are a small pair by the Great Lakes, Rwanda directly north of Burundi. Further south are Uganda, Malawi along its long lake, Zambia above Zimbabwe, and Botswana.

West Africa, west to east

This is where most misses happen, so learn it as a sequence. From the bulge of the continent heading east along the coast: Mauritania, Senegal (with Gambia, a thin strip along the Gambia River, cut into it), Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria.

Togo and Benin are two narrow vertical strips between Ghana and Nigeria, with Togo to the west. Benin's official capital is Porto-Novo, though the government sits in Cotonou.

Names that sound alike

• Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea: the first two are neighbours on the West African coast, Guinea-Bissau the smaller one to the northwest. Equatorial Guinea is far away, a small mainland block between Cameroon and Gabon plus the island of Bioko.
• Niger and Nigeria: Niger is the big landlocked one in the Sahara and Sahel. Nigeria sits directly south of it on the coast.
• The two Congos: the Republic of the Congo is the smaller one to the west. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the giant in the middle of the continent. Their capitals, Brazzaville and Kinshasa, face each other across the Congo River.
• Sudan and South Sudan: South Sudan is the landlocked southern part, capital Juba. Sudan keeps the Red Sea coast and Khartoum.

Islands and enclaves

Six countries are islands or island groups. Madagascar is unmissable. Cabo Verde lies in the Atlantic west of Senegal, and São Tomé and Príncipe sits in the Gulf of Guinea off Gabon. On the Indian Ocean side, Comoros is between Mozambique and northern Madagascar, Mauritius is east of Madagascar, and Seychelles is further north, well out to sea. Use the ring targets and zoom in.

Two small kingdoms hide inside southern Africa. Lesotho is surrounded entirely by South Africa. Eswatini is almost surrounded too, with Mozambique on its eastern side.

Capital hooks

A few rules of thumb help in Type mode. The largest city is often not the capital: Abuja, not Lagos; Yamoussoukro is Côte d'Ivoire's official capital, though most government offices are in Abidjan; Dodoma is Tanzania's official capital while many offices remain in Dar es Salaam. Equatorial Guinea moved its capital to Ciudad de la Paz on the mainland in 2026, and because the move is still under way, Malabo is also accepted. Burundi's political capital has been Gitega since 2019.

Western Sahara is available as an optional territory; the borders and names policy covers why. For recall practice, the African countries quiz has you type all 54 from memory, and the blank map of Africa prints a numbered version with an answer key. The flags of Africa quiz uses the same 54 countries.

All the countries and capitals in this quiz

UN M49 Africa: the 54 African UN member states. Borders and names policy.

Names and capitals: CIA World Factbook (final edition), checked against Wikidata and Natural Earth. Flags: flag-icons, each checked against Wikimedia Commons. See sources. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.