Central Africa
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50 free Central Africa trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Central Africa is the least familiar corner of the continent for many quiz players, and one of the most rewarding. The Congo River drains a rainforest basin the size of a subcontinent, volcanoes smoulder along the eastern lakes, and the region runs from the desert north of Chad to the Atlantic beaches of Gabon and Angola. This quiz covers the countries usually counted as Central Africa: Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the two Congos, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe. Expect capitals, rivers and lakes, animals found nowhere else, the minerals inside a mobile phone, and the kings, colonisers, dictators and independence leaders who shaped the borders. Music, football and a famous boxing match get their turn too. It suits a geography class, a pub quiz round or anyone who wants to know the region better than the headlines allow. The opening questions are the famous stories, later ones reward a closer look at the map, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which boxer beat George Foreman in 1974's Rumble in the Jungle, staged in what is now the DR Congo?
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali soaked up punches on the ropes, a tactic he later dubbed the rope-a-dope, then knocked out the tiring champion in the eighth round.
Q 02Which virus, first identified in 1976, takes its name from a river in the northern DR Congo?
Ebola
Ebola was first identified in the village of Yambuku, but the scientists named it after a river some distance away to spare the village the stigma.
Q 03Eclipse photographs taken on the island of Príncipe in 1919 confirmed which physicist's new theory of gravity?
Einstein
Einstein had predicted that the Sun's gravity bends starlight, and Arthur Eddington's measurements off the African coast brought him worldwide fame.
Q 04Which stripe-legged forest mammal, wild only in the DR Congo, is the giraffe's closest living relative?
Okapi
Okapi were unknown to science until 1901, when the first description placed the species among the horses and zebras.
Q 05Which comic-strip hero visited the Congo in his second adventure, serialised from 1930?
Tintin
Tintin and his dog Snowy were sent to report on the colony; Hergé redrew the story in 1946, and critics have since called it racist and imperialistic.
Q 06Equatorial Guinea is the only sovereign country in Africa where which European language is official?
Spanish
Spanish came with colonial rule that lasted until 1968, and it remains the common tongue among the country's different ethnic groups.
Q 07The Congo, Africa's second-longest river after the Nile, holds which world record among rivers?
The deepest
The deepest recorded river on Earth, the Congo has measured depths of about 220 m, and it is the only major river to cross the Equator twice.
Q 08Chad's blue, yellow and red tricolour is almost identical to the national flag of which European country?
Romania
Romania dropped the Communist emblem from its tricolour in 1989, leaving it a near-match for the flag Chad had adopted in 1959.
Q 09Cameroon takes its name from a river that Portuguese sailors named after which abundant seafood?
Shrimp
Shrimp were so plentiful in the Wouri River that Portuguese explorers called it Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English.
Q 10Ore from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Congo supplied which American programme of the 1940s?
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project built the first atomic bombs with ore from Shinkolobwe, which produced the most economical uranium in the world.
Q 11Which African capital on the Congo River is the largest officially French-speaking city in the world?
Kinshasa
Kinshasa runs its government, schools and media in French, though Lingala is the lingua franca of the street and many residents struggle with French.
Q 12Which Joseph Conrad novella sends the sailor Marlow up an African river to find the ivory trader Kurtz?
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness drew on Conrad's own 1890 job aboard a Congo steamer, and it later inspired the Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now.
Q 13Which European country's king, Leopold II, ran the Congo Free State as his own private domain until 1908?
Belgium
Q 21Which primate of Gabon and Cameroon, with red and blue skin on its face, is the world's largest monkey?
Mandrill
Mandrill hordes in Gabon's Lopé National Park average 620 animals, possibly the largest cohesive groups of wild primates anywhere.
Q 22Which Cameroon striker won the Champions League with Barcelona and then Inter Milan in back-to-back seasons?
Samuel Eto'o
Samuel Eto'o scored in two Champions League finals for Barcelona and was named African Player of the Year four times.
Q 23Chad's volcanic Tibesti Mountains, crowned by the peak Emi Koussi, rise from the middle of which desert?
Sahara
Sahara peaks get no higher than Emi Koussi, a shield volcano at the southern end of the largest mountain range in the desert.
Belgium had no legal hold on the territory until 1908, when its parliament reluctantly annexed it under international pressure over the king's rule.
Q 14Which great ape, as closely related to humans as the chimpanzee, lives wild only south of the Congo River?
Bonobo
Bonobo ancestors were probably cut off when the river formed some 1.5–2 million years ago, since neither they nor chimpanzees swim well.
Q 15The DR Congo mines most of the world's supply of which metal used in rechargeable batteries?
Cobalt
Cobalt comes mostly from the Copperbelt that the country shares with Zambia, and demand has soared as phones and electric cars spread.
Q 16Which hero of the Cuban Revolution left Cuba in 1965 to lead a failed guerrilla campaign in the Congo?
Che Guevara
Che Guevara soon became disillusioned with the poor discipline of the rebels he had come to train, and he was killed in Bolivia two years later.
Q 17The world's largest frog, native to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, is named after which biblical figure?
Goliath
Goliath frogs can exceed 80 cm with legs outstretched, and may have grown so big because they shift heavy objects to build nests for their young.
Q 18Which Cameroon striker danced at the corner flag after each of his four goals at the 1990 World Cup?
Roger Milla
Roger Milla was 38 and had retired from international football until Cameroon's president phoned to plead with him to rejoin the team.
Q 19Which gas burst from Cameroon's Lake Nyos in 1986, suffocating more than 1,700 people in nearby villages?
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is denser than air, so the cloud hugged the ground and rolled down the valleys; a pipe now vents the lake's depths to prevent a repeat.
Q 20Which park in the eastern DR Congo, created in 1925, shelters mountain gorillas beside two active volcanoes?
Virunga
Virunga was founded as the Congo's first national park, and guarding it is dangerous work: more than 170 of its rangers were killed in the 20 years to 2018.
Q 24Which Nobel Peace Prize-winning doctor and organist founded a hospital at Lambaréné in Gabon in 1913?
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer took a pedal piano built for the tropics with him, and it reached the hospital by river in a huge dug-out canoe.
Q 25Which city is the capital of Cameroon, although the port of Douala is the country's economic hub?
Yaoundé
Yaoundé was chosen as the colonial capital in 1922 under French rule, while Douala long remained the more important settlement.
Q 26Which Angolan capital, founded in 1576, has ranked among the world's most expensive cities for expatriates?
Luanda
Luanda was founded by the Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais, which makes it one of the oldest colonial cities in Africa.
Q 27In the early 1900s, the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe became the world's largest producer of which crop?
Cocoa
Cocoa remains the country's most important crop; it followed the sugar plantations that the islands' rich volcanic soil first supported.
Q 28Which army chief seized power in the Congo in 1965 and ruled until 1997, famed for his leopard-skin hat?
Mobutu Sese Seko
Mobutu Sese Seko chartered Concorde for shopping trips to Paris and had an airport built with a runway long enough for it near his jungle palace.
Q 29Which first prime minister of independent Congo was dismissed within months and then killed in January 1961?
Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Lumumba's only surviving remains, a single gold-capped tooth, were handed back to his family in 2022, more than 60 years after his killing.
Q 30From 1971 to 1997, the DR Congo went by which name, taken from a Portuguese word for the Congo River?
Zaire
Zaire came from a Portuguese mangling of the Kikongo word nzadi, meaning river, an odd choice for a campaign meant to restore authentic African names.