Sub-Saharan Africa
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Sub-Saharan Africa trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the name geographers give to the part of the continent that lies below its great northern desert. It takes in dozens of countries and well over a billion people, from the dry grasslands at the desert's edge to rainforest, high plateaus and two long ocean coasts. It is a standard unit in world geography classes, and a region most people know less well than they think. This quiz works through the region the way a good atlas does. It starts with the countries and their capitals, then moves to the rivers, lakes, peaks and deserts that shape the map. From there it turns to the trading empires that grew rich long before Europeans arrived, the colonial carve-up and the independence movements that followed, and the languages, food and wildlife that people know the region for today. It suits a class revising a Sub-Saharan Africa unit, a traveller planning a first trip, or a quiz host who wants a ready-made geography round. The early questions cover the landmarks and leaders most people have heard of. The later ones reward anyone who knows the region's capitals, kingdoms and coastlines in detail. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which West African country, home of the Nollywood film industry, has the largest population in Africa?
Nigeria
Nigeria is home to about one in six Africans, and its more than 250 ethnic groups speak some 500 distinct languages.
Q 02Which dormant volcano in Tanzania is Africa's highest mountain and the tallest free-standing peak on Earth?
Kilimanjaro
Kilimanjaro rises 5,895 m above sea level. Of its three volcanic cones, Mawenzi and Shira are extinct, while Kibo is only dormant and could erupt again.
Q 03Which lake, shared by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, is the largest in Africa by surface area?
Victoria
Lake Victoria was named for the British queen in 1858 by explorer John Hanning Speke, who believed he had found the source of the Nile.
Q 04Which island nation off Africa's southeast coast is the natural home of every species of lemur?
Madagascar
Madagascar split from the Indian subcontinent about 90 million years ago, so lemurs and most of its other wildlife evolved in isolation.
Q 05Which prisoner of Robben Island was freed after 27 years and became South Africa's first Black president?
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk, the president who freed him, shortly before winning the 1994 election.
Q 06Which East African language, official in both Kenya and Tanzania, gave English the word 'safari'?
Swahili
Swahili took 'safari', meaning journey, from Arabic, the source of about 40% of its vocabulary after centuries of contact with Arab traders on the coast.
Q 07Which ruler of the Mali Empire handed out so much gold on his 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca that he became legendary?
Mansa Musa
Mansa Musa gave away so much gold in Cairo that he is said to have noticeably affected its value in Egypt. His fortune came from taxing the trade in salt and gold.
Q 08The dodo, a flightless bird last seen in 1662, lived only on which Indian Ocean island nation?
Mauritius
Mauritius was the dodo's only home, and the bird vanished less than 70 years after Dutch sailors first recorded it in 1598.
Q 09What name was given to the racial segregation system that South Africa's government enforced from 1948 to 1994?
Apartheid
Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning 'separateness'. A 1950 law sorted every South African into a racial group, which then decided where that person could live.
Q 10Which global sporting event did South Africa stage in 2010, the first time it was held on African soil?
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup of 2010 was won by Spain and made the vuvuzela, a long horn blown by fans throughout matches, famous around the world.
Q 11Which country routed an Italian army at Adwa in 1896 and stayed independent through the Scramble for Africa?
Ethiopia
Ethiopia won decisively at Adwa, where more than 6,000 Italian and colonial troops were killed, and became the only African country to owe its independence to a win in battle.
Q 12Which region of northern Tanzania hosts the great migration of more than a million wildebeest each year?
Serengeti
The Serengeti migration loops clockwise into Kenya and back, with about 1.7 million wildebeest following some 260,000 zebras in search of fresh grazing.
Q 13Which thick-trunked tree of sub-Saharan Africa's dry savannas is commonly nicknamed the upside-down tree?
Baobab
Q 21Which chain of geographic depressions runs about 6,500 km from Syria through the Red Sea to Mozambique?
Great Rift Valley
The Great Rift Valley marks where Africa is slowly splitting: along its East African branch the continental plate is tearing in two at 8 to 9 mm a year.
Q 22Which sandy semi-desert of southern Africa has been home to San hunter-gatherers for some 20,000 years?
Kalahari
Kalahari is usually traced to a Tswana word meaning 'the great thirst', yet after good rains its grazing supports more animals and plants than a true desert.
Q 23Which semi-arid belt, stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, lies along the southern edge of the Sahara?
Sahel
Baobab trees store water in their huge trunks to survive long droughts, and one specimen was about 2,450 years old when it died in 2011.
Q 14Which southern African river plunges over the waterfall known locally as 'the smoke that thunders'?
Zambezi
The Zambezi rises in Zambia and crosses Mozambique to reach the Indian Ocean. David Livingstone, shown the falls in 1855, was the first European recorded to see them.
Q 15Which East African capital has a national park, home to lions and black rhinos, about 7 km from its city centre?
Nairobi
Nairobi National Park is fenced on three sides only, so its wildlife can still migrate across the open southern boundary to the plains beyond.
Q 16Which mountain kingdom is completely surrounded by South Africa and lies entirely above 1,000 metres?
Lesotho
Lesotho's lowest point, at 1,400 m, is the highest low point of any country. Only Vatican City and San Marino are likewise enclosed by a single neighbour.
Q 17Which city in Mali, a medieval centre of Islamic scholarship, became an English byword for any faraway place?
Timbuktu
Timbuktu grew rich on the caravan trade across the desert, and in its golden age its Islamic scholars supported an important book trade.
Q 18Which cattle-herding people of Kenya and northern Tanzania are famous for the adumu, a warriors' jumping dance?
Maasai
The Maasai measure a man's wealth in cattle and children, and adumu is a verb in their Maa language meaning to jump up and down in a dance.
Q 19Which country, the former Gold Coast, became sub-Saharan Africa's first colony to win independence in 1957?
Ghana
Ghana took its new name at midnight on 6 March 1957, and its first leader, Kwame Nkrumah, made the country influential in the Pan-African movement.
Q 20Which West African republic, settled by freed Black Americans, named its capital Monrovia after a US president?
Liberia
Liberia's flag, the Lone Star, closely resembles the Stars and Stripes, and its capital was renamed in 1824 for James Monroe, then the US president.
Sahel comes from the Arabic word for 'coast' or 'shore', a figurative name for the land where the great desert ends. The belt is about 5,900 km long.
Q 24Which small African country, with its capital at Kigali, is known in French as the land of a thousand hills?
Rwanda
Rwanda pauses on the last Saturday morning of each month for umuganda, when adults are expected to clean streets or build homes for vulnerable neighbours.
Q 25Which country took its name at independence in 1980 from a ruined stone city built by ancestors of the Shona?
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe, formerly Southern Rhodesia, borrowed the Shona name of the largest stone structure in precolonial southern Africa. The word contains dzimba, meaning 'houses'.
Q 26Which landlocked country holds the Okavango Delta, a vast inland wetland whose water never reaches the sea?
Botswana
Botswana's delta loses nearly all its water to evaporation and thirsty plants. The discovery of diamonds in 1967 transformed the country's economy.
Q 27Which West African megacity was replaced as a national capital by the inland city of Abuja in 1991?
Lagos
Lagos had only about 300,000 inhabitants in 1950 and has since grown into a megacity of an estimated 17 million or more.
Q 28Which capital city, whose name means 'new flower' in Amharic, hosts the headquarters of the African Union?
Addis Ababa
Addis Ababa was founded by Menelik II in 1886 and stands 2,355 metres above sea level, which makes it one of the highest capital cities in the world.
Q 29Which capital city faces Brazzaville, another country's capital, across four kilometres of the Congo River?
Kinshasa
Kinshasa is the largest officially French-speaking city in the world, though Lingala is the lingua franca of its streets. No bridge links it to its neighbour.
Q 30Which city at the foot of Table Mountain is South Africa's legislative capital and the seat of its parliament?
Cape Town
Cape Town is South Africa's oldest city and shares capital duties with Pretoria, the seat of the president, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.