Africa Trivia
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127 free Africa trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 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.
30 of 127 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which African country's national flag features an AK-47 rifle?
Mozambique
Mozambique's flag crosses an AK-47 with a hoe over a book, which its constitution says stand for defence, production and study.
Q 02Which is Africa's largest country by area?
Algeria
Algeria is mostly Sahara, so most Algerians live in its fertile, coastal north.
Q 03As of 2025, which is Africa's most populous country?
Nigeria
Nigeria has more than 200 million people, and over 500 native languages are spoken there, though English is the main language of government.
Q 04Which is the smallest African country by area?
Seychelles
Seychelles spreads 115 islands over about 457 km², and no one lived there until French settlers landed in 1770.
Q 05Which is the smallest country on mainland Africa?
The Gambia
The Gambia is a thin strip either side of its namesake river, never more than about 50 km wide.
Q 06Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, is in which country?
Tanzania
Tanzania is its home, though Kenya's Amboseli park across the border offers some of its best-known views; it is the world's highest free-standing mountain.
Q 07Kilimanjaro's summit is called Uhuru Peak; what does Uhuru mean in Swahili?
Freedom
Freedom is the meaning: Hans Meyer, who made the first ascent in 1889, had named the 5,895 m summit Kaiser-Wilhelm-Spitze, and it was renamed Uhuru Peak after independence.
Q 08The White Nile and the Blue Nile meet at which capital city?
Khartoum
Khartoum is where they meet, and 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
The Mediterranean is where it ends: the Nile flows north, which is why Egypt's southern, upstream stretch is called Upper Egypt.
Q 10Which African river is the deepest in the world, with measured depths of around 220 metres?
Congo
The Congo 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 which two deserts are bigger overall?
Antarctica and the Arctic
Antarctica and the Arctic count because deserts are defined by lack of precipitation, not heat, and both easily outrank the Sahara's 9.2 million km².
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 13Which famous 3.2-million-year-old skeleton found in Ethiopia was named after a Beatles song?
Lucy
Lucy got her name because the Beatles' 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' was playing at camp the night of her 1974 discovery; Ethiopians call her Dinkinesh, 'you are marvellous'.
Q 21Which Ptolemaic queen had affairs with Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony?
Cleopatra
After Cleopatra's death in 30 BC, Octavian made her kingdom a Roman province.
Q 22Which of these is one of the Big Five game animals?
African buffalo
The African buffalo joins the lion, leopard, rhino and elephant on a list big-game hunters drew up of the most dangerous animals to hunt on foot.
Q 23The name Serengeti is often said to derive from a Maa word meaning what?
Endless plains
Endless plains is the popular gloss, and some 1.7 million wildebeest cross those plains each year, with roughly 250,000 dying along the way.
Q 14Madagascar, the fourth-largest island, is home to which native primates?
Lemurs
Lemurs are native only there, because Madagascar has been isolated for about 90 million years, and over 90% of its wildlife is found nowhere else.
Q 15What is the capital of Madagascar?
Antananarivo
Antananarivo is the capital; 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, about 55 km further south than the Cape of Good Hope, is Africa's southernmost point?
Cape Agulhas
Cape Agulhas is also where the International Hydrographic Organization begins the dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
Q 17Which country, entirely surrounded by South Africa, is the largest of the world's three sovereign enclaves?
Lesotho
Lesotho is also the only independent state lying entirely above 1,000 metres; its lowest point, 1,400 m, is the highest low point of any country.
Q 18Which island prison held Nelson Mandela for 18 years?
Robben Island
Robben Island held him for 18 of his 27 years behind bars, and F. W. de Klerk ordered his release in February 1990.
Q 19Which party introduced apartheid in 1948?
National
Apartheid, Afrikaans for separateness, became policy after the National Party won the 1948 election, and its laws were repealed in 1991, three years before the first all-race election.
Q 20Swahili belongs to which group of languages?
Bantu
Swahili is a Bantu language, yet its very name comes from Arabic sawahil, meaning 'coasts'.
Q 24Which is Africa's largest lake by area and the world's largest tropical lake?
Victoria
Lake Victoria's only outflow is the Nile at Jinja, which is why John Hanning Speke, who named it for his queen in 1858, believed he had found where the Nile begins.
Q 25Which African lake is the world's longest freshwater lake and, after Lake Baikal, its second-deepest?
Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika plunges to 1,470 m, and about 98% of its 250-plus cichlid species live nowhere else on Earth.
Q 26The waterfall known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya lies on which river?
Zambezi
The Zambezi drops 108 m over a front 1,708 m wide here, the world's largest sheet of falling water.
Q 27Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Lozi name for the great falls, is usually translated as what?
The Smoke That Thunders
The Smoke That Thunders describes the spray, which typically rises over 400 m and can be seen from up to 50 km away.
Q 28Which disputed territory is an African Union member?
Western Sahara
The Sahrawi Republic, which claims Western Sahara, has held full membership of the African Union and its forerunner since 1982, though the UN does not recognise it.
Q 29The African Union Commission, the AU's secretariat, is based in which city?
Addis Ababa
Addis Ababa means 'new flower' in Amharic, and its diplomatic role has earned it the label 'the political capital of Africa'.
Q 30Which British prime minister told South Africa's parliament during the 'Year of Africa' that a 'wind of change' was blowing?
Macmillan
Harold Macmillan's speech signalled Britain would not block independence; that year 17 African colonies became independent, 14 of them from France.