African Cities
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50 free African Cities trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Africa's cities are far older and far more varied than most maps let on. Some were trading hubs when Europe was still in its Middle Ages, some were laid out by colonial engineers beside a harbour or a railway, and some sprang up almost overnight when prospectors struck something valuable. Many of the best known are not national capitals at all. This quiz asks you to name the city from a clue: a landmark on its skyline, a nickname, the people who founded it, or the moment that put it in the headlines. The questions range across the whole continent, north to south and coast to coast, and take in ancient ruins, holy cities, great ports and resort towns. The opening questions cover the places most people have heard of, and later ones reward travellers and map lovers. It suits geography students, quiz hosts who need a ready-made round, and anyone planning a trip or simply curious about the continent. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which South African city, nicknamed the City of Gold, was founded in 1886 after a gold strike on the Witwatersrand?
Johannesburg
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.
Q 02Which African capital hosted the 1974 'Rumble in the Jungle' title fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman?
Kinshasa
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.
Q 03Which East African capital, named from a Maasai phrase meaning 'cool waters', has a national park inside its boundaries?
Nairobi
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.
Q 04Which Malian city on the edge of the Sahara grew rich on gold and salt and became a centre of Islamic scholarship?
Timbuktu
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.
Q 05Which Egyptian port, founded in 331 BC by a Macedonian conqueror, was famed for its Great Library and Pharos lighthouse?
Alexandria
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.
Q 06Which Nigerian port city, whose name comes from the Portuguese word for 'lakes', was the national capital until 1991?
Lagos
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.
Q 07Which Moroccan port, home to the Hassan II Mosque and its 210-metre minaret, is the country's largest city?
Casablanca
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.
Q 08Which South African city beneath Table Mountain began in 1652 as a Dutch supply station for ships sailing to Asia?
Cape Town
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.
Q 09Which Egyptian city on the west bank of the Nile is the site of the Great Sphinx and three famous pyramids?
Giza
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.
Q 10Which Moroccan city, nicknamed the Red City for its red clay walls, is home to the busy Jemaa el-Fnaa square?
Marrakesh
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.
Q 11Which African capital's Tahrir Square was the centre of the 2011 protests that forced out President Hosni Mubarak?
Cairo
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.
Q 12Which West African capital was the finish line of a famous off-road rally that first set out from Paris in 1978?
Dakar
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.
Q 13Which ancient city near modern Tunis, founded by Phoenicians and home to Hannibal, did Rome destroy in 146 BC?
Carthage
Q 21Which Egyptian city at the Nile's first cataract gives its name to the High Dam that created Lake Nasser?
Aswan
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.
Q 22Which Ugandan city on Lake Victoria was the scene of a 1976 Israeli commando raid that freed airline hostages?
Entebbe
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.
Q 23Which Moroccan port near the Strait of Gibraltar was run as an international zone by foreign powers until 1956?
Tangier
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.
Q 14Which South African city on the Indian Ocean, once called Port Natal, was renamed in 1835 after a Cape governor?
Durban
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.
Q 15Stone Town, where Queen singer Freddie Mercury was born in 1946, is the historic heart of which East African port?
Zanzibar City
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.
Q 16Which South African city, the country's judicial capital, was the 1892 birthplace of 'The Hobbit' author Tolkien?
Bloemfontein
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.
Q 17Which southern African city near Victoria Falls is named after the Scottish missionary who saw the falls in 1855?
Livingstone
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.
Q 18Which East African port city, built by a sultan in the 1860s, has an Arabic name meaning 'abode of peace'?
Dar es Salaam
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.
Q 19Which Kenyan city, guarded since the 1590s by the Portuguese-built Fort Jesus, is the oldest city in the country?
Mombasa
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.
Q 20Which Egyptian city, built on the site of ancient Thebes, lies across the Nile from the Valley of the Kings?
Luxor
Luxor is often called the world's greatest open-air museum, because the ruins of the Karnak temple complex stand inside the modern city.
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.
Q 24Which African capital's national museum keeps 'Lucy', the 3.2-million-year-old hominin skeleton found in 1974?
Addis Ababa
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.
Q 25Which Moroccan city is home to al-Qarawiyyin, a 9th-century foundation often cited as the world's oldest university?
Fez
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.
Q 26Which city on the Ébrié Lagoon is the largest in Ivory Coast and served as its capital until 1983?
Abidjan
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.
Q 27Which northern Nigerian city, a medieval Hausa kingdom and trans-Saharan trade hub, was long ringed by clay walls?
Kano
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.
Q 28Which Ghanaian city was the capital of the Asante Empire and is still the seat of its king, the Asantehene?
Kumasi
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.
Q 29Which city, the second largest in Libya, was the starting point of the 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi?
Benghazi
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.
Q 30Which Ethiopian town, named after a medieval king, is famous for monolithic churches cut from solid rock?
Lalibela
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.