50 Fun Facts About African Geography

Which desert, the largest hot desert on Earth, covers nearly a third of the African continent?

The Sahara spans about 9 million square km, 31% of Africa, yet it ranks only third among the world's deserts: icy Antarctica and the Arctic are both bigger.

Which north-flowing river drains a basin spread across eleven countries before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea?

The Nile gets most of its water from the shorter of its two main branches. The Blue Nile carries more than twice the volume of the longer White Nile.

Which dormant East African volcano is both Africa's highest peak and the world's tallest free-standing mountain?

Kilimanjaro stands 5,895 m above sea level and about 4,900 m above the plateau at its base. Its last eruption came more than 150,000 years ago.

Which island country off Africa's southeast coast is the native home of all lemurs?

Madagascar broke away from the Indian subcontinent about 90 million years ago, and that long isolation is why over 90% of its wildlife is found nowhere else.

Which lake, shared by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, is Africa's largest by area and the world's largest tropical lake?

Victoria got its English name in 1858, when explorer John Hanning Speke, the first Briton to document the lake, renamed it after his queen. Only Lake Superior is a larger freshwater lake by area.

Which country, whose largest city Lagos is no longer its capital, has more people than any other in Africa?

Nigeria has more than 200 million people, the sixth-largest population on Earth. Its government left crowded coastal Lagos in 1991 for Abuja, a capital planned and built for the purpose.

Which river plunges over the mile-wide waterfall known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya, 'The Smoke That Thunders'?

The Zambezi drops 108 m there, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, in a curtain 1,708 m wide. It is counted as the world's largest sheet of falling water.

Which African country also reaches into Asia, with its Sinai Peninsula lying east of the Suez Canal?

Egypt straddles two continents, and the canal dug across its land bridge, opened in 1869, cut about 8,900 km off the sea voyage from the Arabian Sea to London.

Which kingdom, the only country lying entirely above 1,000 metres, is completely surrounded by South Africa?

Lesotho's lowest point, at 1,400 m, is the highest low point of any country. Only two other states sit wholly inside a single neighbour: Vatican City and San Marino.

Which narrow channel, about 14 km wide at its tightest point, separates Morocco from mainland Europe?

The Strait of Gibraltar reopened about 5.33 million years ago in the Zanclean flood, when the Atlantic poured back into a Mediterranean basin that had largely dried out.

Which capital, nicknamed the City of a Thousand Minarets, anchors the largest urban area in the Arab world?

Cairo earned the nickname through its wealth of Islamic architecture, and the city has grown so far that the Giza pyramids now stand within its sprawl.

Which river, the deepest ever measured, flows between the facing capitals Kinshasa and Brazzaville?

The Congo is the only major river to cross the equator twice. Some part of its basin is always in a rainy season, so its flow stays steady all year.

Which city beneath Table Mountain is the legislative capital of South Africa and the seat of the national parliament?

Cape Town is the country's oldest city and one of three capitals. The government sits in Pretoria, and the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein.

Which East African plain sees over a million wildebeest loop north each year toward Kenya's Masai Mara reserve?

The Serengeti is often said to take its name from a Maasai word for "endless plains". Its herds, more than 1.5 million wildebeest, walk a circuit of about 800 km.

Which sea does the Suez Canal join to the Mediterranean, sparing ships the long voyage around Africa?

The Red Sea is an inlet of the Indian Ocean, joined to it far to the south through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. Its shallow shelves are famous for corals.

Which type of grassland covers almost half the surface of Africa, including the plains of Kenya and Tanzania?

Savanna is grassland with scattered trees, and elephants help keep it open: they strip bark, break off branches and smash trunks as they feed.

Which Mediterranean country, mostly desert, became Africa's largest by area when Sudan split in two in 2011?

Algeria covers about 2.38 million square km, making it the tenth-largest country in the world, yet most of its people live in the fertile, mountainous north.

Which chain of trenches, about 6,500 km long, runs from Syria down through East Africa to Mozambique?

The Great Rift Valley marks where Africa is slowly tearing in two: along its East African section the continent is splitting into separate plates by a few millimetres a year.

Which range, crowned by the 4,167-metre peak Toubkal in Morocco, stretches about 2,500 km across northwest Africa?

The Atlas Mountains wall off the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts from the desert beyond, and their high valleys are home mainly to Berber villagers.

Which city in Mali, once a rich stop on desert caravan routes, has a Western reputation as an exotic, mysterious place?

Timbuktu was far more than a legend: the Sankoré mosque and its school made the trading town one of the great centres of Islamic scholarship in medieval Africa.

Which country lost its coast when Eritrea became independent, making it the world's most populous landlocked nation?

Ethiopia was left without a port after Eritrea's 30-year war of independence. Its navy carried on from foreign harbours for a few years before being disbanded in 1996.

Which South African headland is Africa's true southern tip and the official divide between two oceans?

Cape Agulhas, Portuguese for "Cape of Needles", lies about 150 km east-southeast of the far more famous Cape of Good Hope, which is commonly mistaken for the tip of Africa.

Which capital city sits on the Cap-Vert peninsula, the westernmost point of mainland Africa?

Dakar looks out on Gorée, the small offshore island that the Portuguese turned into a base for the Atlantic slave trade.

Which West African capital, founded in 1822 as a settlement for free Black Americans, is named after a US president?

Monrovia honours James Monroe, a prominent supporter of the American Colonization Society, whose members founded the settlement that became the capital of Liberia.

Which East African capital has a national park, home to lions and rhinos, only about 7 km to its south?

Nairobi National Park, set up in 1946, is fenced on only three sides, so migrating herds still wander in and out across its open southern boundary.

Which inland city, about 450 km west of Dar es Salaam, is the official capital of Tanzania?

Dodoma was picked in the 1970s to put the capital at the centre of the country, but the move from the coast dragged on for decades: a new State House opened there only in 2023.

Which southern African capital was called Salisbury, after a British prime minister, until it was renamed in 1982?

Harare took its new name on the second anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence. It began in 1890 as Fort Salisbury, founded by a small military column of the British South Africa Company.

Which river in Botswana fans out into a vast inland delta in the Kalahari and never reaches any sea?

The Okavango floods its delta between June and August, in Botswana's dry winter, swelling the wetland to three times its permanent size before nearly all the water evaporates.

Which Indian Ocean archipelago off East Africa, famous for its cloves, is sometimes known as the Spice Islands?

Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania whose main islands are Unguja and Pemba. Britain took control in the 1800s partly to command its clove and ivory exports.

Which lake, shared by four countries, is the world's longest freshwater lake and second deepest after Siberia's Baikal?

Tanganyika is the deepest lake in Africa and holds more fresh water than any other on the continent: about 16% of all the world's available fresh water.

Which country contains Lake Assal, a salt lake 155 m below sea level that is the lowest point on land in Africa?

Djibouti's Lake Assal is the third-lowest spot on land anywhere, after the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, and the thick salt along its shore is mined commercially.

Which country has the longest coastline on mainland Africa, facing both the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean?

Somalia wraps around the tip of the Horn of Africa, which also makes it the easternmost country on the continent's mainland.

Which semi-arid belt, up to 1,000 km wide, crosses Africa from coast to coast just south of its great northern desert?

The Sahel is where the Great Green Wall is taking shape, a huge reforestation effort meant to stop the desert creeping south across the belt.

In which body of water off Africa does the equator meet the prime meridian, at a point nicknamed Null Island?

The Gulf of Guinea holds the point where both lines read zero. Null Island began as a joke among mapmakers, and mapping software now uses the spot to trap records wrongly given the coordinates 0,0.

Which small landlocked country, known in French as the Land of a Thousand Hills, has its capital at Kigali?

Rwanda is dominated by mountains in its centre and west, and its hills are crowded: it ranks among the most densely populated countries in the world.

Which country holds Lake Volta, the world's largest artificial reservoir by surface area, behind its Akosombo Dam?

Ghana flooded 740 villages to fill the lake, resettling about 78,000 people, and the dam still generates a substantial share of the country's electricity.

Which Atlantic-coast country on the equator is nearly nine-tenths forest and has its capital at Libreville?

Gabon's capital Libreville, French for "Freetown", was founded in 1849 as a settlement for slaves freed by the French navy from a Brazilian ship.

Which country, the smallest on mainland Africa, is a thin strip along one river and bordered by Senegal on three sides?

The Gambia covers just 11,300 square km. Its borders follow the lower reaches of the river it is named for, so the country takes the long, winding shape of the waterway itself.

Which Tanzanian landmark, the world's largest intact, unfilled volcanic caldera, shelters about 25,000 large animals?

Ngorongoro formed two to three million years ago, when a giant volcano erupted and collapsed on itself. It left a bowl 610 m deep with a floor of 260 square km.

Which sparsely populated country, with its capital at Windhoek, won independence from South Africa in 1990?

Namibia is one of the most sparsely populated countries on Earth. Before independence it was ruled as South West Africa, a territory first colonised by Germany in 1884.

Which European country governs Ceuta and Melilla, two autonomous cities on the North African coast bordering Morocco?

Spain has held Melilla since 1497, and Ceuta, seized by Portugal in 1415, later passed to the Spanish crown. Morocco claims both cities.

Which fog-bound shore in southwest Africa, littered with shipwrecks, did Portuguese sailors call 'The Gates of Hell'?

The Skeleton Coast is named for the whale and seal bones that once littered its sands, and for the ships wrecked in the dense fogs raised by the cold Benguela current.

Which Atlantic port, home to the Hassan II Mosque and its 210-metre minaret, is the largest city in Morocco?

Casablanca is Morocco's business centre, though the government sits in Rabat. The mosque's minaret, 60 storeys high, is topped by a laser that points toward Mecca.

Which lake in west-central Africa shrank from 25,000 square km of open water in the 1960s to under 2,000 in the 1980s?

Chad's great lake shrank through a changing climate and the diversion of water for human use. Its main source is a single river, the Chari.

Which country owns Cabinda, an oil-rich exclave cut off from its main territory by a neighbour's strip of coast?

Angola's Cabinda sits beside some of the largest offshore oil fields in the world, discovered in 1967 while Portugal still ruled the territory.

Which dry, dusty trade wind blows across West Africa from the northeast between late November and mid-March?

The Harmattan is nicknamed the "doctor wind" because its dryness feels invigorating after humid tropical air. Under it, relative humidity can drop below 5%.

Which caustic lake in northern Tanzania is the only regular breeding ground for East Africa's lesser flamingos?

Natron's water is a caustic alkaline brine, and that is its appeal: it keeps predators away from the nests the birds build on islands of crusted salt.

Which vast swamp in eastern Africa, averaging over 30,000 square km, halted Roman soldiers sent upriver by Emperor Nero?

The Sudd, in South Sudan, is a maze of channels, lagoons and papyrus, and for many centuries its thick vegetation was an impenetrable barrier to boats heading into equatorial Africa.

Which volcano, about 12 km north of the lakeside city of Goma, usually holds a lava lake in its main crater?

Nyiragongo is feared for the speed of its lava. Most flows creep, but this volcano's can race downhill at up to 100 km/h.

Which waterfall in South Africa's Drakensberg range, measured at 983 m in 2016, may be the tallest in the world?

Tugela Falls may out-top Venezuela's Angel Falls. Both were measured from a considerable distance, and nobody has settled which of the two is taller.