Zambia Trivia
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47 free Zambia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Zambia trivia quiz covers the landlocked heart of southern Africa: Victoria Falls and Devil's Pool, the Zambezi and its great dam at Kariba, Lake Tanganyika, Kalambo Falls, the Kasanka bat migration and the wildlife of South Luangwa and Kafue. It also covers the story of the country: Broken Hill Man, the Luba-Lunda kingdoms, Livingstone and Rhodes, Northern Rhodesia and the Federation, Kenneth Kaunda's 27 years, the copper economy, and the peaceful handovers since 1991 — plus culture and sport, from nshima and the kwacha to the 1993 Gabon air disaster, Kalusha Bwalya and the Chipolopolo's 2012 Africa Cup of Nations triumph. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital of Zambia?
Lusaka
Lusaka became capital in 1935 because the colonial government wanted a more central seat than its old one in the far south, closer to the mining towns that drove the economy.
Q 02What was Zambia called before independence in 1964?
Northern Rhodesia
Northern Rhodesia was run for decades by a chartered company rather than the Crown; Britain took direct control only in 1924, forty years before independence.
Q 03Which river forms much of Zambia's southern border and plunges over Victoria Falls?
The Zambezi
The Zambezi gave Zambia its name at independence; it rises in the far north-west, loops out through a neighbour and returns to mark the whole border with Zimbabwe.
Q 04Who was Zambia's first president, in office from 1964 to 1991?
Kenneth Kaunda
Kenneth Kaunda ran a one-party state for much of that time, yet when he restored multiparty elections in 1991 and lost, he handed over power peacefully.
Q 05Which motto appears on Zambia's coat of arms?
One Zambia, One Nation
One Zambia, One Nation was chosen to stress unity in a country of more than 70 ethnic groups; 'Zambia Shall Be Free' was an independence leader's memoir and 'Stand and Sing of Zambia' opens the anthem.
Q 06What set Zambia's team apart at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics?
It changed its name mid-Games
It changed its name mid-Games: independence fell on the day of the closing ceremony, so the team that had marched in as a British protectorate paraded out behind a new placard reading 'Zambia'.
Q 07Which observance shares Zambia's Independence Day, 24 October?
United Nations Day
United Nations Day falls then because the UN Charter took effect on 24 October 1945, once the five permanent Security Council members and most other signatories had ratified it.
Q 08Which battery metal is mined as a by-product of Zambia's copper?
Cobalt
Cobalt sits in the same ore as the copper that has long dominated Zambia's exports, so the mines recover it as a by-product; the same mineral belt runs on across the northern border.
Q 09Which emblem sits at the fly of Zambia's flag rather than the centre?
An African fish eagle
An African fish eagle already sat on the colonial coat of arms, but on the flag it flies free in the upper corner to stand for the people's ability to rise above their problems.
Q 10The name of Zambia's currency, the kwacha, means what in several of the country's languages?
Dawn
Dawn: the name echoes the independence movement's promise of a 'new dawn of freedom', and the kwacha took over from the Zambian pound in 1968.
Q 11What is the local Lozi name for Victoria Falls, meaning 'the smoke that thunders'?
Mosi-oa-Tunya
Mosi-oa-Tunya describes the spray, which rises more than 400 metres above the gorge and looks from afar like smoke; the national park on the Zambian bank carries the name too.
Q 12Which Scottish missionary was the first European recorded to see Victoria Falls, in November 1855?
David Livingstone
David Livingstone first looked over the edge from an island on the lip of the falls, which now bears his name, and he named the cataract for Queen Victoria.
Q 13Victoria Falls is classed as the world's largest waterfall on the basis of what?
Its combined width and height
Q 21What is nshima, the staple of Zambian meals?
A thick porridge of pounded white maize
A thick porridge of pounded white maize is a fairly recent staple: maize reached Africa from the Americas only in the 16th and 17th centuries, displacing sorghum and millet.
Q 22Most of Zambia's national football team died in a 1993 plane crash just after take-off from which African city?
Libreville, Gabon
The military plane came down in the sea off Libreville, Gabon, after a refuelling stop, killing all 30 aboard, including 18 players; investigators found the pilot had shut down the wrong engine.
Q 23Zambia won its first Africa Cup of Nations in 2012 by beating which team on penalties in the final?
Its combined width and height, about 1,708 metres by 108, produce the largest single sheet of falling water on Earth, which is the measure behind the title.
Q 14Which dam, shared with Zimbabwe, made a lake so vast that Operation Noah had to rescue thousands of stranded animals?
Kariba
Kariba's rising waters threatened wildlife across the valley, so rangers caught and moved some 6,000 animals; about 57,000 Tonga people were also resettled from their riverside homes.
Q 15At Zambia's Kalambo Falls, archaeologists reported in 2023 the oldest known structure built from which material?
Wood
Wood rarely survives, but waterlogged ground preserved two logs joined by a cut notch for at least 476,000 years, so they were shaped before our own species existed.
Q 16Zambia's highest point, Mafinga Central, stands in the far north-east on the border with which country?
Malawi
Malawi shares Mafinga Central, a summit so little surveyed that published heights differ by several metres.
Q 17Which country's border with Zambia is about 150 metres long?
Botswana
Botswana and Zambia meet for only about 150 metres of river, where four countries almost touch; until a bridge opened in 2021, a ferry was the only direct link between them.
Q 18Which archaic human skull, about 300,000 years old, was found in a Zambian mine in 1921?
Broken Hill Man
Broken Hill Man was dug out by miners at what is now Kabwe and taken to Britain, and Zambia has been negotiating to get the skull back.
Q 19Whose company secured a mineral concession from Lewanika, the Lozi king, in 1890?
Cecil Rhodes
Cecil Rhodes sent an agent to Lewanika, who wanted British protection; the king later felt deceived, because the deal put his country under a commercial company that ran it until 1924.
Q 20Which territory joined colonial Zambia and Zimbabwe in the Central African Federation from 1953 to 1963?
Nyasaland
Nyasaland, today's Malawi, was the third member; Africans in the two northern territories campaigned against a union dominated by the white-ruled south, and it was dissolved at the end of 1963.
Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast lost 8-7 on penalties after a goalless final, Stoppila Sunzu scoring the winner in the very city off whose coast the 1993 team's plane had crashed.
Q 24Zambia's Kalusha Bwalya scored a hat-trick in a 4–0 win over which country at the 1988 Seoul Olympics?
Italy
Zambia thrashed Italy 4-0 in the group stage, Kalusha Bwalya scoring three; he was spared the 1993 crash because he travelled separately from his Dutch club.
Q 25Millions of which animals gather in Zambia's Kasanka National Park each year in a famous migration?
Fruit bats
Fruit bats pour into one small patch of forest for about three months from October to feast on its fruit, a gathering often called the largest mammal migration on Earth.
Q 26Which Rift Valley lake on Zambia's northern border is home to hundreds of cichlid fish found nowhere else?
Tanganyika
Tanganyika is the world's longest freshwater lake and the second deepest, an ancient basin where at least 250 kinds of cichlid evolved that live nowhere else.
Q 27Which vice-president became acting president when Michael Sata died in office in 2014?
Guy Scott
Guy Scott became mainland Africa's first white head of state since apartheid ended, but a constitutional clause on candidates' parentage was held to bar him from standing in the election that followed.
Q 28Who won Zambia's 2021 presidential election with 59% of the vote, defeating incumbent Edgar Lungu?
Hakainde Hichilema
Hakainde Hichilema won at his sixth attempt, four years after spending four months in jail on a treason charge for allegedly failing to give way to the president's motorcade.
Q 29Under its 1996 constitution, Zambia is officially declared what?
A Christian nation
A Christian nation: the clause was pressed by President Frederick Chiluba, a fervent born-again Christian elected in 1991, and it sits beside a guarantee of freedom of conscience and religion.
Q 30Which local language is the everyday lingua franca of Zambia's capital?
Nyanja
Nyanja belongs to the east of the country, where it is also called Chewa, yet an urban variety known as Town Nyanja became the common speech of the capital.