African Geography
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50 free African Geography trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Africa is the second-largest continent, and its map is full of extremes. It straddles both the equator and the prime meridian, holds more countries than any other continent, and is home to record-setting rivers, deserts, lakes and peaks. That makes African geography a favourite of classrooms and quiz nights alike. This quiz covers the whole continent: countries and their capitals, the major rivers and lakes, deserts and ranges, islands, capes and shorelines, plus the borders and place names that tell a story. The opening questions are the famous landmarks every classroom globe shows. Later ones reach for the wetlands, winds and volcanoes that keen map readers know. It suits a middle school class revising Africa, a family testing each other on a long drive, or a quiz host who needs a ready-made round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something, and the questions can be printed for use on paper.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which desert, the largest hot desert on Earth, covers nearly a third of the African continent?
Sahara
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.
Q 02Which north-flowing river drains a basin spread across eleven countries before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea?
Nile
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.
Q 03Which dormant East African volcano is both Africa's highest peak and the world's tallest free-standing mountain?
Kilimanjaro
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.
Q 04Which island country off Africa's southeast coast is the native home of all lemurs?
Madagascar
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.
Q 05Which lake, shared by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, is Africa's largest by area and the world's largest tropical lake?
Victoria
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.
Q 06Which country, whose largest city Lagos is no longer its capital, has more people than any other in Africa?
Nigeria
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.
Q 07Which river plunges over the mile-wide waterfall known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya, 'The Smoke That Thunders'?
Zambezi
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.
Q 08Which African country also reaches into Asia, with its Sinai Peninsula lying east of the Suez Canal?
Egypt
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.
Q 09Which kingdom, the only country lying entirely above 1,000 metres, is completely surrounded by South Africa?
Lesotho
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.
Q 10Which narrow channel, about 14 km wide at its tightest point, separates Morocco from mainland Europe?
Strait of Gibraltar
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.
Q 11Which capital, nicknamed the City of a Thousand Minarets, anchors the largest urban area in the Arab world?
Cairo
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.
Q 12Which river, the deepest ever measured, flows between the facing capitals Kinshasa and Brazzaville?
Congo
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.
Q 13Which city beneath Table Mountain is the legislative capital of South Africa and the seat of the national parliament?
Cape Town
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.
Q 21Which country lost its coast when Eritrea became independent, making it the world's most populous landlocked nation?
Ethiopia
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.
Q 22Which South African headland is Africa's true southern tip and the official divide between two oceans?
Cape Agulhas
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.
Q 23Which capital city sits on the Cap-Vert peninsula, the westernmost point of mainland Africa?
Dakar
Q 14Which East African plain sees over a million wildebeest loop north each year toward Kenya's Masai Mara reserve?
Serengeti
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.
Q 15Which sea does the Suez Canal join to the Mediterranean, sparing ships the long voyage around Africa?
Red Sea
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.
Q 16Which type of grassland covers almost half the surface of Africa, including the plains of Kenya and Tanzania?
Savanna
Savanna is grassland with scattered trees, and elephants help keep it open: they strip bark, break off branches and smash trunks as they feed.
Q 17Which Mediterranean country, mostly desert, became Africa's largest by area when Sudan split in two in 2011?
Algeria
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.
Q 18Which chain of trenches, about 6,500 km long, runs from Syria down through East Africa to Mozambique?
Great Rift Valley
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.
Q 19Which range, crowned by the 4,167-metre peak Toubkal in Morocco, stretches about 2,500 km across northwest Africa?
Atlas Mountains
The Atlas Mountains wall off the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts from the desert beyond, and their high valleys are home mainly to Berber villagers.
Q 20Which city in Mali, once a rich stop on desert caravan routes, has a Western reputation as an exotic, mysterious place?
Timbuktu
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.
Dakar looks out on Gorée, the small offshore island that the Portuguese turned into a base for the Atlantic slave trade.
Q 24Which West African capital, founded in 1822 as a settlement for free Black Americans, is named after a US president?
Monrovia
Monrovia honours James Monroe, a prominent supporter of the American Colonization Society, whose members founded the settlement that became the capital of Liberia.
Q 25Which East African capital has a national park, home to lions and rhinos, only about 7 km to its south?
Nairobi
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.
Q 26Which inland city, about 450 km west of Dar es Salaam, is the official capital of Tanzania?
Dodoma
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.
Q 27Which southern African capital was called Salisbury, after a British prime minister, until it was renamed in 1982?
Harare
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.
Q 28Which river in Botswana fans out into a vast inland delta in the Kalahari and never reaches any sea?
Okavango
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.
Q 29Which Indian Ocean archipelago off East Africa, famous for its cloves, is sometimes known as the Spice Islands?
Zanzibar
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.
Q 30Which lake, shared by four countries, is the world's longest freshwater lake and second deepest after Siberia's Baikal?
Tanganyika
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.