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80 free Africa trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
51 free Africa trivia questions with answers. Africa is 54 countries, a fifth of the planet's land, the longest river on Earth and the deepest one, the world's largest hot desert and a rift that is slowly tearing the continent in two. This quiz ranges over all of it: which country is biggest and which is smallest, where the White and Blue Nile meet, what Mosi-oa-Tunya means, why Lesotho is a geographic oddity, and how many countries won independence in the single year of 1960. Easy questions cover Kilimanjaro, the Big Five and the 2010 World Cup; harder ones get into Mansa Musa's pilgrimage, the Battle of Adwa, the Nubian pyramids of Sudan, the Ethiopian calendar, the CFA franc and the song that first put Afrobeats on the Billboard Hot 100. Every answer has been checked against a published source, mostly Wikipedia and official pages, and the citation is shown under each question so you can settle an argument on the spot. Good for geography buffs, quiz-night hosts and anyone who wants to know the continent beyond the headlines.
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Q 01How many fully recognised sovereign states does Africa contain?
54
That is more than any other continent, and the tally does not include the disputed Western Sahara or the self-declared Somaliland.
Q 02Which is Africa's largest country by area?
Algeria
It only took the top spot in 2011, when Sudan lost roughly a quarter of its territory to the newly independent south.
Q 03Which is Africa's most populous country?
Nigeria
With well over 200 million people it is also the most populous country in the world where English is an official language.
Q 04Which is the smallest African country by area?
Seychelles
Its 115 islands add up to about 452 square kilometres, and it is also the continent's least populous country.
Q 05Which is the smallest country on mainland Africa?
The Gambia
It is a thin strip either side of its namesake river, surrounded on three sides by Senegal and never more than about 50 km wide.
Q 06Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, is in which country?
Tanzania
It is a dormant volcano and the highest free-standing mountain above sea level anywhere in the world.
Q 07Kilimanjaro's summit stands at roughly what elevation above sea level?
5,895 m
The summit point is Uhuru Peak, on the rim of the Kibo crater; the mountain's second peak, Mawenzi, is a jagged 5,149 m.
Q 08The White Nile and the Blue Nile meet at which capital city?
Khartoum
The Blue Nile, rising in the Ethiopian highlands, supplies most of the water that reaches Egypt during the flood season.
Q 09The Nile empties into which sea?
Mediterranean
It flows north for its whole length, which is why ancient Egyptians thought of 'upstream' as south and called the far south Upper Egypt.
Q 10Which African river is the deepest in the world, with measured depths of around 220 metres?
Congo
It is also the only major river to cross the equator twice, which keeps its flow steady because one half of the basin is always in rainy season.
Q 11The Sahara is the largest hot desert but only the third-largest overall. Which two are bigger?
Antarctica and the Arctic
Deserts are defined by lack of precipitation, not heat, so the polar regions count and easily outrank the Sahara's 9.2 million square kilometres.
Q 12What is the belt of semi-arid savanna along the Sahara's southern edge called?
Sahel
The name comes from the Arabic for 'shore', the idea being that the desert is a sea and the Sahel is its coastline.
Q 13The East African Rift is slowly splitting the African plate into the Nubian plate and which other?
Somali
The two halves are pulling apart at 8–9 mm a year, so in tens of millions of years the Horn of Africa could become an island.
Q 21Amharic, the working language of Ethiopia's federal government, belongs to which language branch?
Semitic
That makes it a relative of Arabic and Hebrew, and after Arabic it is the most widely spoken Semitic language on Earth; it is written in a script grown from Geʽez.
Q 22How many months does the Ethiopian calendar have?
13
Twelve months of exactly 30 days plus a short thirteenth of five or six days, and the year number runs seven to eight years behind the Gregorian one.
Q 23Which of these is one of the Big Five game animals?
African buffalo
The list — lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant and buffalo — was drawn up by big-game hunters as the five most dangerous animals to hunt on foot, not the five most impressive to photograph.
Q 14Madagascar ranks where among the world's largest islands?
Fourth
Only Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo are bigger; it split from the Indian subcontinent roughly 90 million years ago.
Q 15What is the capital of Madagascar?
Antananarivo
The island's first permanent settlers were Austronesian seafarers from Southeast Asia, which is why Malagasy is closer to languages of Borneo than to any on the mainland.
Q 16Which headland is Africa's southern tip and the official Atlantic-Indian Ocean dividing line?
Cape Agulhas
It lies about 55 km further south than the far more famous Cape of Good Hope; Portuguese sailors named it 'Cape of Needles' because compass needles there pointed true north.
Q 17Which kingdom, entirely surrounded by South Africa, is the largest of the world's three sovereign enclaves?
Lesotho
It is also the only independent state on Earth that lies entirely above 1,000 metres; its lowest point, 1,400 m, is the highest low point of any country.
Q 18How many years did Nelson Mandela spend in prison?
27
Most of that was on Robben Island, followed by Pollsmoor and Victor Verster prisons, before F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990.
Q 19The Afrikaans word 'apartheid' literally means what?
Separateness
The system began after the National Party's 1948 election win and its laws were finally repealed on 17 June 1991, clearing the way for the 1994 election.
Q 20Swahili belongs to which language family?
Bantu
Even so, about 40% of its vocabulary is borrowed from Arabic, including the language's own name, from a word meaning 'coasts'.
Q 24The name Serengeti is often said to derive from a Maa word meaning what?
Endless plains
Around 1.7 million wildebeest circle the ecosystem each year on the great migration, and roughly 250,000 of them die along the way.
Q 25Which is Africa's largest lake by area and the world's largest tropical lake?
Victoria
It gets about 80% of its water straight from rain and is shared three ways, with 49% in Tanzania, 45% in Uganda and just 6% in Kenya.
Q 26Which African lake is the world's longest freshwater lake and, after Lake Baikal, its second-deepest?
Tanganyika
It reaches 1,470 m deep and is shared by four countries; some 98% of its 250-plus cichlid species live nowhere else.
Q 27The waterfall on the Zambia–Zimbabwe border known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya lies on which river?
Zambezi
Victoria Falls, as David Livingstone named it in 1855, is 1,708 m wide and 108 m high — the largest sheet of falling water in the world.
Q 28Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Lozi name for the great falls, is usually translated as what?
The Smoke That Thunders
The spray can rise more than 400 m and be seen 50 km away; David Livingstone renamed the falls for the British queen after seeing them in 1855.
Q 29How many member states does the African Union have?
55
That is one more than the number of UN-recognised African states because the AU also admits the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Western Sahara).
Q 30The African Union Commission, the AU's secretariat, is based in which city?
Addis Ababa
The city's name means 'new flower' in Amharic, and its diplomatic role has earned it the label 'the political capital of Africa'.