Equatorial Guinea
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49 free Equatorial Guinea trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Equatorial Guinea trivia quiz covers the small oil state on the Gulf of Guinea, the only sovereign country in Africa where Spanish is official. It moves from Fernando Pó and the Portuguese, the Treaty of El Pardo and the British anti-slavery base at Port Clarence to Spanish Guinea, independence in 1968, the horrors of Macías Nguema, his nephew Obiang's decades in power, the 1995 oil strike, the 2004 Wonga Coup and the new capital being built in the jungle. Sport gets its turn too, from Eric the Eel to the two Africa Cups of Nations the country hosted. The early questions suit anyone who knows the country's language; the later ones test people who know what happened at Malabo's stadium on Christmas Eve 1969 and which island's people speak Portuguese creole. Every question is multiple choice with a short explanation after you answer. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Equatorial Guinea is the only sovereign country in Africa where which language is official?
Spanish
Spanish is the main means of communication; French was made an official language only later, to draw the country closer to its French-speaking neighbours.
Q 02Equatorial Guinea's independence day, 12 October, is the anniversary of which explorer's landfall?
Columbus
Columbus sighted land on 12 October 1492, so the new state's independence day falls on the very date its former colonial ruler celebrates as its own national day.
Q 03Which purpose-built city in the mainland rainforest became Equatorial Guinea's official capital in January 2026?
Ciudad de la Paz
Ciudad de la Paz, the 'City of Peace', was still unfinished when a decree made it the capital on 2 January 2026, and the ministries were given a year to move there from the old island capital.
Q 04Snowflake, the only known albino gorilla, was captured in Equatorial Guinea and became the star of which city's zoo?
Barcelona
Barcelona Zoo kept Snowflake from 1966 until his death in 2003; scientists who later sequenced his genome traced his white coat to inbreeding, his parents having been close relatives.
Q 05The mainland part of Equatorial Guinea is called what?
Río Muni
Río Muni is a misnomer: the Muni that gave the mainland its name is not a river at all but an estuary on its southern edge, where several rivers meet the sea.
Q 06By what name was the island of Bioko historically known to Europeans?
Fernando Pó
Fernando Pó was the Portuguese navigator who first sighted the island; his name outlasted Portuguese rule there by two centuries and was still on the map at independence.
Q 07The Portuguese navigators who first sighted Bioko in the 1470s were probing Africa's coast for a sea route to where?
India
India was the prize: Portuguese captains spent decades edging down the African coast before Vasco da Gama finally rounded the Cape and reached it in 1498.
Q 08In 1778 Portugal traded away Bioko and Annobón to secure land in which of its colonies?
Brazil
Brazil had spread far beyond the line the two crowns drew in 1494, and the Treaty of El Pardo settled the border quarrels that followed; the two African islands were part of the price.
Q 09For some years from 1827, Britain's navy kept a base on Bioko for what purpose?
Suppressing the slave trade
Suppressing the slave trade: warships based on the island chased slave ships in the Gulf of Guinea, and many of the captives they freed were settled around the base, where their descendants stayed.
Q 10Who was Equatorial Guinea's first president, whose 1968-79 rule was notorious for brutality?
Francisco Macías Nguema
Francisco Macías Nguema won a free election in 1968 and then turned the country into a prison: by the time he was overthrown and shot in 1979, a third of the population had fled or been killed.
Q 11Which 1968 hit song blared from stadium loudspeakers as Equatorial Guinea's first dictator had prisoners executed?
Those Were the Days
Those Were the Days, Mary Hopkin's wistful chart-topper, was reputedly the dictator's favourite song, and he had it played over the stadium speakers while the firing squads did their work.
Q 12Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang, who seized power in 1979, is related how to the dictator he overthrew?
He is his nephew
He is his nephew: Obiang had run the regime's most notorious prison and commanded its troops on the main island before he turned on his uncle and had him tried and shot.
Q 13After Equatorial Guinea's first president was shot in 1979, his children grew up under the protection of which foreign leader?
Q 21Since 2004 teams have sprayed homes across Bioko to protect islanders from which disease?
Malaria
Malaria infection among the island's children has fallen by more than two-thirds since the spraying began, and deaths among under-fives dropped sharply in the campaign's first four years.
Q 22Which island lies in the Gulf of Guinea between Equatorial Guinea's islands of Bioko and Annobón?
São Tomé
São Tomé sits in the gap between them and belongs to a separate country; all these islands are peaks of a single mountain chain strung out across the Gulf of Guinea.
Q 23In 2023 Equatorial Guinea confirmed its first ever outbreak of which deadly virus, a relative of Ebola?
Marburg
Kim Il Sung
Kim Il Sung had taken the three children in months before the coup; daughter Mónica spent 15 years in Pyongyang, went to a military boarding school there and later wrote a memoir about it.
Q 14Teodorín Obiang, son of Equatorial Guinea's president, collects which pop star's memorabilia?
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson's crystal-studded glove is among his trophies: a 2014 settlement with US prosecutors cost him a Malibu mansion, yet he kept the glove and a private jet.
Q 15The failed 2004 plot to replace President Obiang with mercenaries is popularly known as what?
The Wonga Coup
The Wonga Coup collapsed before it began: dozens of mercenaries were arrested when their plane touched down in Zimbabwe, on their way to install an exiled opposition leader as president.
Q 16Which British prime minister's son was convicted in South Africa of helping to fund a 2004 coup plot against Equatorial Guinea?
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher's son Mark was fined three million rand and given a suspended jail term in 2005 after admitting he had helped to finance the plot, though he insisted he had done so unwittingly.
Q 17Which American oil company's mid-1990s discovery turned Equatorial Guinea into a major oil producer?
Mobil
Mobil's find changed everything: within five years the economy was among the fastest-growing in the world, yet very little of the money reached ordinary people.
Q 18By which measure does oil-rich Equatorial Guinea rank among Africa's richest countries, though few benefit?
Income per person
Income per person makes the country look rich, but the oil money is so unevenly shared that it is cited as a textbook case of the 'resource curse', with much of the population still living in poverty.
Q 19Which ethnic group makes up the large majority of Equatorial Guinea's population?
Fang
Fang speakers are roughly four in five of the population; colonial borders cut through their homeland, so large Fang communities also live just across the country's northern and eastern frontiers.
Q 20A few rivers in Equatorial Guinea and one neighbouring country are the only home of the world's largest species of which animal?
Frog
Frog: the goliath frog grows as heavy as a house cat. Its tadpoles feed on a single waterside plant, which may be why the species lives nowhere else.
Marburg can kill almost nine in ten of those it infects; this outbreak, traced to a village funeral on the mainland, was declared over four months later after 12 confirmed deaths.
Q 24On 1 January 1985 Equatorial Guinea became the first non-Francophone African country to do what?
Adopt the CFA franc
Adopt the CFA franc: the move tied the country's money to that of its French-speaking neighbours and ended the ekwele, a home-grown currency launched only ten years earlier.
Q 25Which Eton-educated former SAS officer led the mercenaries behind the failed 2004 coup against Equatorial Guinea?
Simon Mann
Simon Mann spent three years in a Zimbabwean jail before being handed over to the regime he had tried to topple, which sentenced him to 34 years and then pardoned him after one.
Q 26The highest point in Equatorial Guinea, Pico Basilé on Bioko, is what kind of feature?
A shield volcano
A shield volcano: it is the largest of three overlapping volcanoes whose lava built the whole island and left it with unusually rich soils.
Q 27Which country's coast is the nearest mainland to Equatorial Guinea's island of Bioko?
Cameroon
Cameroon's coast is several times nearer than Equatorial Guinea's own mainland, because Bioko is the first in a line of islands that carries the mountains of western Cameroon out to sea.
Q 28The blue triangle on Equatorial Guinea's flag represents what?
The ocean linking its parts
The ocean linking its parts: the country is a block of mainland plus five islands scattered across the Gulf of Guinea, which is also why six stars sit on the coat of arms at the flag's centre.
Q 29Equatorial Guinea's Eric Moussambani became a worldwide celebrity at the 2000 Sydney Olympics in which sport?
Swimming
Swimming: 'Eric the Eel' had taken up the sport only that January. Left to race his 100 m heat alone when both rivals false-started, he barely made it home, in more than twice the winner's time.
Q 30Equatorial Guinea hosted the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations after which country was stripped of it?
Morocco
Morocco asked for a delay because of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and was thrown out instead; the stand-in hosts, given two months to prepare, went on to finish fourth.