50 Fun Facts About African Cities

Which South African city, nicknamed the City of Gold, was founded in 1886 after a gold strike on the Witwatersrand?

Johannesburg grew from farmland to more than 100,000 people within a decade of the gold rush. It is now South Africa's largest city, yet it is not one of the country's three capitals.

Which African capital hosted the 1974 'Rumble in the Jungle' title fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman?

Kinshasa staged the fight because President Mobutu Sese Seko wanted the publicity for Zaire, as the country was then called. Ali won it with his famous rope-a-dope tactic.

Which East African capital, named from a Maasai phrase meaning 'cool waters', has a national park inside its boundaries?

Nairobi National Park is fenced on three sides, but its southern edge is left open so migrating herds can come and go. Opened in 1946, it was Kenya's first national park.

Which Malian city on the edge of the Sahara grew rich on gold and salt and became a centre of Islamic scholarship?

Timbuktu owed its fame to Mansa Musa, who recruited scholars from across the Islamic world to teach there. In Europe its reputation later shifted from rich to mysterious.

Which Egyptian port, founded in 331 BC by a Macedonian conqueror, was famed for its Great Library and Pharos lighthouse?

Alexandria takes its name from its founder, Alexander the Great, and served as Egypt's capital for almost a millennium. Its lighthouse was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Which Nigerian port city, whose name comes from the Portuguese word for 'lakes', was the national capital until 1991?

Lagos handed the capital to purpose-built Abuja in 1991, fifteen years after the move was decided. It remains Nigeria's most populous city and the home of its Afrobeats studios.

Which Moroccan port, home to the Hassan II Mosque and its 210-metre minaret, is the country's largest city?

Casablanca is Morocco's economic capital, while the government sits in Rabat. A laser on top of the Hassan II Mosque's minaret points towards Mecca.

Which South African city beneath Table Mountain began in 1652 as a Dutch supply station for ships sailing to Asia?

Cape Town is South Africa's oldest city and the seat of its Parliament, which makes it the legislative capital. Table Mountain National Park lies inside the city boundaries.

Which Egyptian city on the west bank of the Nile is the site of the Great Sphinx and three famous pyramids?

Giza is home to the Great Pyramid, the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the only one still largely intact. It once stood about 8 metres taller than it does now.

Which Moroccan city, nicknamed the Red City for its red clay walls, is home to the busy Jemaa el-Fnaa square?

Marrakesh was founded around 1070 as the capital of the Almoravid dynasty, and its red walls went up in the 1120s. The old medina around the square is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Which African capital's Tahrir Square was the centre of the 2011 protests that forced out President Hosni Mubarak?

Cairo's Tahrir Square, meaning Liberation Square, took that name after Egypt's 1919 revolution. Crowds filled it again in 2013 before President Morsi was overthrown.

Which West African capital was the finish line of a famous off-road rally that first set out from Paris in 1978?

Dakar still gives the rally its name, even though the race left Africa after security threats in Mauritania cancelled the 2008 event. It moved to South America and later to Saudi Arabia.

Which ancient city near modern Tunis, founded by Phoenicians and home to Hannibal, did Rome destroy in 146 BC?

Carthage fell after a siege of nearly three years in the Third Punic War. In legend its founder, Queen Dido, was offered only as much land as an oxhide could cover.

Which South African city on the Indian Ocean, once called Port Natal, was renamed in 1835 after a Cape governor?

Durban honours Sir Benjamin D'Urban, then governor of Cape Colony. From 1860, indentured labourers arriving from British India gave the city its large Indian community.

Stone Town, where Queen singer Freddie Mercury was born in 1946, is the historic heart of which East African port?

Zanzibar City's old quarter is named for the coral stone its houses are built from, and it became a World Heritage Site in 2000. A Freddie Mercury museum opened there in 2019.

Which South African city, the country's judicial capital, was the 1892 birthplace of 'The Hobbit' author Tolkien?

Bloemfontein was Tolkien's home only until he was three, when his mother took him to England on a family visit. The city is nicknamed the City of Roses for its annual rose festival.

Which southern African city near Victoria Falls is named after the Scottish missionary who saw the falls in 1855?

Livingstone, in Zambia, was the first capital of Northern Rhodesia from 1911 to 1935. The explorer's Scottish birthplace gave its name to another African city, Blantyre in Malawi.

Which East African port city, built by a sultan in the 1860s, has an Arabic name meaning 'abode of peace'?

Dar es Salaam was Tanzania's capital until the government moved to Dodoma, a shift decided in 1974 and completed only in 1996. It is still the country's largest city.

Which Kenyan city, guarded since the 1590s by the Portuguese-built Fort Jesus, is the oldest city in the country?

Mombasa is traditionally dated to around 900 AD. Fort Jesus was captured and recaptured at least nine times between 1631 and 1895, when the British turned it into a prison.

Which Egyptian city, built on the site of ancient Thebes, lies across the Nile from the Valley of the Kings?

Luxor is often called the world's greatest open-air museum, because the ruins of the Karnak temple complex stand inside the modern city.

Which Egyptian city at the Nile's first cataract gives its name to the High Dam that created Lake Nasser?

Aswan's High Dam, built with Soviet help between 1960 and 1970, was designed to control the Nile's annual floods. The city's quarries supplied granite for ancient Egypt's obelisks.

Which Ugandan city on Lake Victoria was the scene of a 1976 Israeli commando raid that freed airline hostages?

Entebbe was the seat of government in colonial Uganda, and its name comes from a Luganda word for 'seat'. The hijacked Air France jet had been diverted there with Idi Amin's backing.

Which Moroccan port near the Strait of Gibraltar was run as an international zone by foreign powers until 1956?

Tangier's international years drew diplomats, spies, bohemians and writers to the city. Its nickname, the Door of Africa, reflects its place at the continent's north-western tip.

Which African capital's national museum keeps 'Lucy', the 3.2-million-year-old hominin skeleton found in 1974?

Addis Ababa's National Museum of Ethiopia shows the public a plaster replica rather than the original bones. Lucy got her name from a Beatles song played in camp on the night of the find.

Which Moroccan city is home to al-Qarawiyyin, a 9th-century foundation often cited as the world's oldest university?

Fez owes the mosque that became the university to Fatima al-Fihri, a wealthy merchant's daughter. The city's old medina is one of the world's largest car-free urban areas.

Which city on the Ébrié Lagoon is the largest in Ivory Coast and served as its capital until 1983?

Abidjan gave up the title to Yamoussoukro in 1983 yet is still the seat of government. It took off after a new wharf opened in 1931, and the lagoon splits the city in two.

Which northern Nigerian city, a medieval Hausa kingdom and trans-Saharan trade hub, was long ringed by clay walls?

Kano had clay walls ten miles long and thirty feet high when the German scholar Heinrich Barth saw them in 1851. Pyramids of stacked groundnut sacks later became a symbol of its trade.

Which Ghanaian city was the capital of the Asante Empire and is still the seat of its king, the Asantehene?

Kumasi is where, in Ashanti legend, the priest Okomfo Anokye received the Golden Stool that embodies the nation's soul. Its Kejetia Market is among the biggest in West Africa.

Which city, the second largest in Libya, was the starting point of the 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi?

Benghazi was seized by Gaddafi's opponents within a week, and they founded the National Transitional Council there. In ancient times it was the Ptolemaic city of Berenice.

Which Ethiopian town, named after a medieval king, is famous for monolithic churches cut from solid rock?

Lalibela is laid out as a symbolic Jerusalem, and tradition dates its churches to the reign of King Gebre Meskel Lalibela around 1200. Some are carved from a single block of stone.

Which South African township, once home to both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, saw a student uprising in 1976?

Soweto has a name that is short for South Western Townships. Its Vilakazi Street is known as the only street in the world to have housed two Nobel Prize winners.

Which Egyptian city, founded in 1859 as digging began, stands at the Mediterranean entrance to the Suez Canal?

Port Said takes its name from Sa'id of Egypt, the ruler who founded it. Its twin, Port Fuad, sits on the canal's Asian bank, so the urban area spreads across two continents.

Which South African city, birthplace of De Beers, grew up around a hand-dug diamond mine called the Big Hole?

Kimberley was rich enough by 1882 to become the first city in the Southern Hemisphere with electric street lighting. Cecil Rhodes made his fortune there.

Which Tanzanian city near Mount Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti hosted the UN tribunal for the Rwandan genocide?

Arusha hosted the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from 1994 to 2015. It is also the headquarters of the East African Community and the seat of the African Court.

Which Malian town on the Bani River floodplain is home to the world's largest mud-brick building, its Great Mosque?

Djenné's whole community helps to maintain the mosque during an annual festival. The present building dates only from 1907, though a mosque first rose on the site around the 13th century.

Which Moroccan city, home to the country's biggest film studios, was a filming location for 'Gladiator'?

Ouarzazate wins film work with its desert landscapes, historic architecture, trained crews and low costs. Productions shot there run from 'Lawrence of Arabia' to 'Game of Thrones'.

Which Moroccan mountain town, founded in 1471 as a small kasbah, is nicknamed the Blue City for its painted houses?

Chefchaouen took in Muslims and Jews who left Spain during and after the Reconquista. They built their quarters in the Andalusi style, much like the old districts of Granada.

Which southern Nigerian capital of Edo State lost its famous royal bronzes to a British expedition in 1897?

Benin City fell to British forces in February 1897, and two hundred of the pieces they took went to the British Museum. Despite its name, it lies in Nigeria, not the Republic of Benin.

Which Congolese city on Lake Kivu was partly buried by lava when Mount Nyiragongo erupted in 2002?

Goma lost about 13 percent of its area to the lava, which left nearly 120,000 people homeless. The flow covered the northern end of the airport runway and ran on into Lake Kivu.

Which city on the Wouri River estuary is the largest in Cameroon and the country's economic capital?

Douala is bigger than the political capital, Yaoundé, and long had Central Africa's largest port. Portuguese sailors knew its estuary as the Rio dos Camarões, or Shrimp River.

Which Sudanese city across the Nile from Khartoum gave its name to an 1898 battle won by Lord Kitchener?

Omdurman grew rapidly around the tomb of the Mahdi, which Kitchener ordered desecrated after his victory. A 23-year-old Winston Churchill was at the battle as a soldier and reporter.

Which city, the second largest in Zimbabwe, was the royal seat of the Ndebele king Lobengula until 1893?

Bulawayo was captured in 1893 by British South Africa Company soldiers during the First Matabele War. Its name comes from the Ndebele word bulala and translates as 'the one to be killed'.

Which Ugandan city on the north shore of Lake Victoria sits beside the source of the White Nile?

Jinja takes its name from a local word for 'the stones', the flat rocks beside the river. Most of them vanished under water when the Owen Falls Dam was built in 1954.

Which Ethiopian town, capital of an ancient empire famed for giant stelae, is rumoured to hold the Ark of the Covenant?

Aksum's stelae began as plain, rough grave markers for royal tombs and grew into some of the world's largest monuments. The town lies in Ethiopia's Tigray Region.

Which Mediterranean port, Algeria's second-largest city and long held by Spain, is the birthplace of raï music?

Oran has produced raï stars such as Cheb Khaled, and the music's name means 'opinion' in Arabic. Spain first occupied the port in 1509.

Which Congolese copper-mining city, called Élisabethville under Belgian rule, was the capital of breakaway Katanga?

Lubumbashi was established in 1910 and named in honour of Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians. Its site was picked for being close to the Etoile du Congo copper mine.

Which Algerian city, the ancient Numidian capital Cirta, is called the City of Bridges for the spans over its ravine?

Constantine was renamed in Roman times in honour of the emperor Constantine the Great. A deep ravine frames the city, crossed by bridges and a viaduct.

Which Tunisian city, founded about 670 by the Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi, is famed for its Great Mosque?

Kairouan became a leading centre of Sunni scholarship and Quranic learning, and its old city has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988. Uqba chose a site in a dense forest.

Which colonial town near the mouth of the Senegal River was the capital of French West Africa until 1902?

Saint-Louis had been the capital of France's Senegal colony since 1673, and from 1920 to 1957 it also governed neighbouring Mauritania. It became a World Heritage Site in 2000.

Which Ethiopian city, chosen by Emperor Fasilides in 1636, is called the Camelot of Africa for its royal castles?

Gondar served as the capital of the Ethiopian Empire, and its castle compound, Fasil Ghebbi, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Caravans from Sudan and the Red Sea converged there.