Nairobi
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49 free Nairobi trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Nairobi began in 1899 as a railway depot on a swamp that the Maasai called the place of cool waters, replaced Mombasa as capital within eight years and is now the financial hub of East Africa, a city of more than five million with a national park inside its boundaries and a UN headquarters in its northern suburbs. These 49 questions cover the history, geography and culture of Kenya's capital: the chief engineer who picked the site, the plague that burned Bazaar Street, the Norwegian-designed conference centre with a public helipad, the 1998 embassy bombing memorial, Uhuru Park and the Nobel laureate who saved it, Kibera and Eastleigh, Out of Africa and the suburb named after its author, matatus and their yellow stripe, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, the Standard Gauge Railway to Mombasa, Gor Mahia and the Safari Rally. Easy questions stick to the country, the name and the famous park; the hard ones ask about the first town planner, the Arboretum's founding year, the elevation and the city's twin towns. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a geography night.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Nairobi lies just south of which imaginary line, which crosses Kenya?
The Equator
The Equator crosses Kenya north of the capital, yet Nairobi is no steamy tropical city: its setting high in the highlands keeps the days mild and the evenings cool.
Q 02From which people's language does the name Nairobi come?
Maasai
Maasai speakers called the place Enkare Nairobi, 'cold water', for the stream and water hole there, and the railway camp pitched beside it in the 1890s simply kept the name.
Q 03Nairobi is famous among capital cities for having what on its doorstep, in sight of its skyscrapers?
A national park
A national park begins a few kilometres from the city centre, fenced on three sides and left open to the south so that herds can still migrate, while rhinos and zebras roam against the skyline.
Q 04Nairobi began in the 1890s as a supply depot on which colonial railway?
Uganda Railway
The Uganda Railway took its name from its goal, not its route: the original line ran from the Indian Ocean to Lake Victoria, all of it in what is now Kenya.
Q 05In 1989 Kenya's president set fire to twelve tons of what on the edge of Nairobi?
Ivory
Ivory, a whole stockpile of it, went up in a blaze that made headlines around the world and recast Kenya as a champion of wildlife; far bigger pyres have followed.
Q 06In 1898, work on the railway that created Nairobi was halted at Tsavo by a pair of man-eating what?
Lions
Lions: two maneless males dragged workers from their tents until the bridge engineer shot them, and after some 25 years as rugs on his floor their skins were bought and remounted by a Chicago museum.
Q 07Which Nairobi-born conservationist ran Kenya's national museums before taking charge of its wildlife service?
Richard Leakey
Richard Leakey first became a safari guide to escape his parents' trade, then led the Lake Turkana digs that unearthed Turkana Boy, the skeleton of a youth who died some 1.6 million years ago.
Q 08The 'Nairobi fly', which can blister human skin, is really which kind of insect?
A beetle
A beetle, and it neither bites nor stings: the red-and-black rove beetle carries a toxin that burns only when the insect is crushed against the skin, so the advice is to blow it off.
Q 09Nairobi's Indian Bazaar was burned down in the early 1900s to stamp out which disease?
Plague
Plague: the town's medical officer had the whole bazaar torched and the street rebuilt from scratch, and it survives today as Biashara Street.
Q 10Which mobile-money service, launched in 2007 by Nairobi-based Safaricom, lets people send cash by text message?
M-Pesa
M-Pesa pairs M for mobile with pesa, the Swahili for money, and it needs no bank branches: corner shops and airtime sellers act as its cash points.
Q 11Which Nairobi landmark, opened in 1973, has a rooftop helipad that is open to the public?
The KICC
The KICC was Kenya's tallest building for a quarter of a century, so its rooftop became a lookout over the whole city, and visitors still buy tickets to go up.
Q 12At a sanctuary and manor hotel in Nairobi's Lang'ata suburb, guests hand-feed which animals?
Giraffes
Giraffes of the rare Rothschild's kind have been bred there since the 1970s, and at the manor they push their heads through the windows to share the guests' breakfast.
Q 13Nairobi's main international airport is named after whom?
Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyatta, the country's first president, opened the new terminal in March 1978 and died that August, and what had been Embakasi Airport was renamed in his memory.
Q 21What does 'Uhuru' in Uhuru Park mean in Swahili?
Freedom
Freedom was the watchword of the independence years: Kenya's fourth president was named Uhuru as self-rule approached, and Star Trek's Lieutenant Uhura takes her name from the same word.
Q 22Which president's plan for a party skyscraper in Nairobi's Uhuru Park was abandoned after protests?
Daniel arap Moi
Daniel arap Moi wanted the tower as a headquarters for his ruling party, but a campaign of protest letters scared off its foreign backers and the park survived.
Q 23The Sheldrick Trust's nursery on the edge of Nairobi is world-famous for hand-rearing which orphans?
Elephants
Elephants are bottle-fed there by keepers and later returned to the wild, a feat made possible when the founder worked out a milk formula that infant elephants could digest.
Q 14Which event in August 1998 is commemorated by a memorial park in downtown Nairobi?
The US Embassy bombing
The US Embassy bombing killed more than 200 people in Nairobi, most of them Kenyans, and the park laid out where the embassy stood carries their names on a memorial wall.
Q 15The eight-lane superhighway opened from Nairobi in 2012 runs to which town, famed for its pineapples?
Thika
Thika is known for pineapples, yet Elspeth Huxley's memoir The Flame Trees of Thika, later a British television serial, follows a settler family planting coffee there.
Q 16The Standard Gauge Railway opened in 2017 links Nairobi with which port?
Mombasa
Mombasa was twelve hours or more away on the worn-out colonial line before the Madaraka Express, named after the day Kenya won self-rule, replaced it.
Q 17Which Nairobi governor was impeached and removed in December 2020?
Mike Sonko
Mike Sonko was impeached by the county assembly and then removed by the Senate on charges that included abuse of office and gross misconduct, and the assembly's speaker was sworn in to act in his place.
Q 18Which high ground to the west is the most prominent feature of the Nairobi area?
Ngong Hills
The Ngong Hills stand out because they rise on the very edge of the Great Rift Valley: walkers on the ridge look down into the valley on one side and across Nairobi on the other.
Q 19Which famous British scientist was born in Nairobi in 1941?
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins was born there because the Second World War had stationed his father in Kenya; the family went home to England when he was eight.
Q 20Which campaigner led the fight to save Nairobi's Karura Forest from developers?
Wangari Maathai
Wangari Maathai, later a Nobel Peace laureate, was beaten by security guards in 1999 while planting trees on land handed to developers; after months of protest the president banned all handouts of public land.
Q 24Which UN bodies have their headquarters in Nairobi?
UN Environment and UN-Habitat
UN Environment and UN-Habitat make Nairobi one of only four cities with a main UN office; the environment agency came in the 1970s because developing countries pressed for a first UN headquarters of their own.
Q 25In which Nairobi suburb is the United Nations compound located?
Gigiri
Gigiri has grown into Nairobi's diplomatic quarter: embassies and international organisations clustered around the UN compound and brought a large expatriate community with them.
Q 26Which Nairobi neighbourhood is nicknamed 'Little Mogadishu'?
Eastleigh
Eastleigh was laid out in 1921 for Asian residents, but Somali traders have since turned it into a bazaar of stalls and malls selling goods shipped in from Mogadishu and Dubai, camel milk included.
Q 27Which Nairobi slum, among Africa's largest, was a main filming location for the 2005 film The Constant Gardener?
Kibera
Kibera so affected the cast and crew that the film's producer set up a trust in its name to pay for clean water and schooling in the places where it was shot.
Q 28In which Netflix science-fiction series is one hero a Nairobi matatu driver nicknamed Van Damn?
Sense8
Sense8 shot his scenes on location in Nairobi, one of nine cities used for its first season, as it followed strangers around the world who can share each other's skills.
Q 29Which writer grew coffee on land that is now a Nairobi suburb sharing her first name?
Karen Blixen
Karen Blixen ran the farm until drought and falling coffee prices sent her home to Denmark, where she turned those years into a famous memoir; her farmhouse is now a museum.
Q 30Which 1985 film set around Nairobi won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture?
Out of Africa
Out of Africa took seven Oscars on a night when The Color Purple, with the same eleven nominations, went home with none.