African History
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50 free African History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Africa's history is the longest human story there is. It runs from the earliest fossil ancestors through pharaohs and desert caravans to gold-rich empires, walled cities and centres of learning that drew scholars across the Sahara, long before European ships arrived. This quiz covers the whole sweep: ancient civilizations along the Nile and the Mediterranean, the medieval trading empires of the west and the city-states of the east coast, the slave trade and the colonial scramble, and the independence leaders and liberation struggles of the twentieth century. It suits students revising African civilizations, teachers planning a lesson, and quiz hosts who want 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 emperor of Mali became legendary for the gold he carried on a 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca?
Mansa Musa
Mansa Musa gave away so much gold in Cairo along the way that his generosity is said to have noticeably shifted its value across Egypt.
Q 02Which North African general marched war elephants over the Alps to invade Roman Italy?
Hannibal
Hannibal won crushing victories at Lake Trasimene and Cannae and occupied most of southern Italy for 15 years, yet he never took the city of Rome itself.
Q 03Which queen of Ptolemaic Egypt is the only ruler of her Greek-speaking dynasty known to have learned Egyptian?
Cleopatra
Cleopatra came from a family that had governed Egypt for generations as Greek monarchs who refused to learn the local tongue. She spoke several languages by adulthood.
Q 04Which East African sultanate lost history's shortest war, beaten by British warships within 45 minutes?
Zanzibar
Zanzibar's 1896 war began when Sultan Khalid took the throne without British approval. Once his palace came under fire, he fled to the German consulate.
Q 05Which West African republic, settled by Black Americans, named its capital after US president James Monroe?
Liberia
Liberia declared independence in 1847 and is Africa's oldest republic, yet the United States withheld recognition until 1862, during its own Civil War.
Q 06Which medieval city, built by ancestors of the Shona, is famed for towering granite walls laid without mortar?
Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe's largest enclosure has walls 11 metres high. Colonial rulers pressed archaeologists to deny that Africans built it; the modern country later took its name from the ruins.
Q 07Which fossil skeleton, found in Ethiopia in 1974, showed human ancestors walked upright 3.2 million years ago?
Lucy
Lucy got her name from a Beatles song played over and over in camp on the night of the find. In Ethiopia she is also known as Dinkinesh, meaning 'you are marvellous'.
Q 08Which former prison off Cape Town, now a museum, held Nelson Mandela for 18 of his 27 years behind bars?
Robben Island
Robben Island takes its name from an old Dutch word for seals. It held prisoners from the late 1600s until 1996 and became a World Heritage Site three years later.
Q 09Which African state is often called the first country to recognise the independent United States?
Morocco
Morocco opened its ports to American ships in 1777, and the friendship treaty the two signed in 1786 became the longest unbroken treaty relationship in US history.
Q 10Which West African city, a byword for remoteness, flourished as a medieval centre of Islamic scholarship?
Timbuktu
Timbuktu grew rich on caravans of gold and ivory after joining the Mali Empire. In 2013, about 28,000 of its old manuscripts were moved to safety before militants set a library alight.
Q 11Which Phoenician-founded North African city fought three Punic Wars with Rome before being destroyed?
Carthage
Carthage fell in 146 BC after a siege of nearly three years. In legend its founder, Queen Dido, was promised the land one oxhide could cover, so she cut the hide into strips.
Q 12Which Egyptian port city boasted the ancient world's largest library and a lighthouse among its Seven Wonders?
Alexandria
Alexandria was founded in 331 BC by Alexander the Great. It served as Egypt's capital until a new one was founded at Fustat, now part of Cairo.
Q 13Which inscribed slab, found by a French officer in Egypt in 1799, gave scholars the key to reading hieroglyphs?
Rosetta Stone
Q 21Which Belgian king ran the Congo Free State as his own private colony, growing rich on forced rubber labour?
Leopold II
Leopold II never visited the territory he owned outright from 1885 to 1908. Scandal over deaths and abuse there finally forced him to hand it to the Belgian state.
Q 22Which Ugandan dictator expelled tens of thousands of Asians in 1972, claiming God had told him to in a dream?
Idi Amin
Idi Amin later added 'CBE' to his titles, for Conqueror of the British Empire, after the United Kingdom broke off diplomatic relations with Uganda in 1977.
Q 23Which Ghanaian diplomat led the United Nations from 1997 to 2006 and shared a Nobel Peace Prize with it?
Kofi Annan
The Rosetta Stone repeats one royal decree in three versions, the last in ancient Greek that scholars could already read. British forces seized it in 1801, and it reached London the next year.
Q 14Which waterway did Egypt's President Nasser nationalise in 1956, prompting an international crisis?
Suez Canal
The Suez Canal took ten years to dig and opened in 1869. It cut the voyage between the Arabian Sea and London by about 8,900 km.
Q 15In which European capital did an 1884–85 conference set the rules for the colonial Scramble for Africa?
Berlin
Berlin hosted delegates from fourteen countries, yet no African state was invited. Six of the fourteen went home without securing any territory.
Q 16Which Zulu king built a formidable army around the short stabbing spear before his half-brothers killed him?
Shaka
Shaka ruled the Zulu Kingdom from 1816 to 1828 and is credited with introducing the iklwa, a short spear with a long, broad, sword-like head.
Q 17Which British mining magnate founded De Beers and dreamed of a railway running from the Cape to Cairo?
Cecil Rhodes
Cecil Rhodes became prime minister of the Cape Colony in 1890. His will set up the Oxford scholarship that carries his name, the oldest graduate scholarship in the world.
Q 18Which Ethiopian emperor appealed to the League of Nations in 1936 after Italy invaded his country?
Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie chose to address the League in Amharic, though he was fluent in French. His earlier title, Ras Tafari, gave the Rastafari faith its name.
Q 19Which Anglican archbishop chaired South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission after apartheid ended?
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Tutu had already won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his activism, and he popularised the term 'Rainbow Nation' for the country that emerged after 1994.
Q 20In which country were hundreds of thousands of Tutsi killed by Hutu militias in about 100 days in 1994?
Rwanda
Rwanda's genocide began the day after its president was assassinated and ended when a rebel army captured the capital, Kigali, about 100 days later.
Kofi Annan was the first secretary-general to be chosen from the UN's own staff. His first name is the Akan name for a boy born on a Friday.
Q 24Which country won independence in 1962 after a war that brought down France's Fourth Republic?
Algeria
Algeria had been declared an integral part of France in 1848, not a mere colony. At independence some 900,000 European settlers fled within a few months.
Q 25By which name was the Democratic Republic of the Congo known under Mobutu Sese Seko from 1971 to 1997?
Zaire
Zaire came from a Portuguese mangling of a local word for river. The old name was restored in 1997, less than four months before the exiled Mobutu died.
Q 26Which Portuguese navigator sailed around Africa's southern tip to open the first sea route from Europe to India?
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama landed in India in May 1498, a decade after Bartolomeu Dias first rounded the Cape. On the way his crews became the first known Europeans to visit Mombasa.
Q 27Which name is given to the Atlantic crossing that carried millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas?
Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was one stage of the triangular trade linking Europe, Africa and the Americas. An estimated two million captives, about 14%, died during the voyage.
Q 28Which Scottish missionary named Victoria Falls and was famously tracked down by reporter Henry Morton Stanley?
David Livingstone
David Livingstone was the first European to see the waterfall, known locally as 'the smoke that thunders'. When he died in 1873 in what is now Zambia, his heart was buried under a tree there.
Q 29Which Bantu language, rich in Arabic loanwords, emerged as the common tongue of East Africa's trading ports?
Swahili
Swahili takes even its own name from Arabic, from a word meaning 'of the coasts'. The borrowings date from centuries of contact between Arab traders and Bantu speakers on the shore.
Q 30Which mineral, cut into slabs at the Saharan mines of Taghaza, did desert caravans carry south to West Africa?
Salt
Salt was so plentiful at Taghaza that the miners' buildings were made from slabs of it and roofed with camel skins. Each camel carried two thick slabs away.