Uganda Trivia
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48 free Uganda trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Uganda is the country Winston Churchill called the Pearl of Africa, and this quiz covers it from the kingdoms of the Great Lakes to the present: Kitara and Bunyoro, the Kabakas of Buganda, the Uganda Martyrs, the 1894 protectorate and the railway built by Indian labourers, independence in 1962, Milton Obote, Idi Amin's eight brutal years and the raid on Entebbe, the war with Tanzania, and Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986. Easy questions ask for the capital, the great lake, the river that rises there and the national bird; the harder ones want the highest peak, the meaning of the country's name, the number of refugees it hosts, the omelette wrapped in a chapati, the runner who broke the 5,000m and 10,000m world records and the hurdler who won Uganda's first Olympic gold. There is also Bwindi's mountain gorillas, matoke, the five traditional kingdoms, the world's youngest population, Bobi Wine and the Cranes. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, its cities and its history, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country borders Uganda to the east?
Kenya
Kenya lies along Uganda's entire eastern border; the DR Congo lies to the west, and Uganda's route to the sea runs east through Kenya's railways and roads.
Q 02Uganda shares which lake, the world's second-largest freshwater lake, with two neighbours?
Victoria
Lake Victoria covers about 68,800 square kilometres, making it Africa's largest lake and the world's second-largest freshwater lake by area; Uganda holds roughly 45 per cent of it.
Q 03Which British statesman visited in 1907 and dubbed Uganda the 'Pearl of Africa'?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill, then a junior colonial minister, toured the protectorate in 1907 and praised it in his 1908 book 'My African Journey'; the phrase became Uganda's tourism slogan.
Q 04Which kingdom, whose king is the Kabaka, covers much of southern Uganda including Kampala?
Buganda
Buganda, the kingdom of the Baganda people, is ruled by the Kabaka; its language, Luganda, is widely spoken, and Britain rewarded its help against Bunyoro with Bunyoro's 'lost counties'.
Q 05In which year did Uganda gain independence from Britain?
1962
Uganda became independent from Britain on 9 October 1962; a year later Kabaka Mutesa II became the new state's ceremonial first president.
Q 06Which general seized power in a January 1971 coup and ruled Uganda for eight years?
Idi Amin
Idi Amin ruled from the January 1971 coup until April 1979; estimates of the dead under his regime run as high as 500,000, and Forest Whitaker won an Oscar playing him in 'The Last King of Scotland'.
Q 07In 1972 Idi Amin expelled roughly how many people of Indian origin from Uganda?
80,000
Uganda's roughly 80,000 Asians were given 90 days to leave in August 1972; many were descended from labourers brought to build the Uganda Railway, and most went to Britain.
Q 08In July 1976 Israeli commandos rescued hostages from a hijacked Air France plane at which airport?
Entebbe
Entebbe's old terminal held the hostages for a week with the dictator's backing; Israeli commandos freed 102 of 106 on 4 July 1976, losing commander Yonatan Netanyahu.
Q 09Idi Amin was overthrown in 1979 by an invasion from which neighbouring country to the south?
Tanzania
Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere sent his army north after the Kagera region was invaded in October 1978; Kampala fell on 11 April 1979 and the dictator fled to Libya.
Q 10Which leader's rebel forces took Kampala in January 1986, making him president of Uganda?
Yoweri Museveni
Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army took Kampala in January 1986 after a bush war begun in 1981; parliament scrapped presidential term limits in 2005 and the age limit in 2017.
Q 11Which pop star turned politician took 35% of the vote against Museveni in the 2021 election?
Bobi Wine
Bobi Wine, born Robert Kyagulanyi, won 34.8 per cent officially as the National Unity Platform candidate in January 2021; he rejected the result and was held under house arrest afterwards.
Q 12Which bird appears in the white disc at the centre of Uganda's black, yellow and red flag?
The crested crane
The crested crane, Uganda's national bird, stands in the white disc facing the hoist; the six stripes repeat black, yellow and red for the people, sunshine and brotherhood.
Q 13Uganda's highest peak, Mount Stanley, lies in which range on the DR Congo border?
The Rwenzori
Q 21John Akii-Bua won Uganda's first Olympic gold at Munich 1972 in which event, setting a world record?
400m hurdles
Akii-Bua ran the 400m hurdles in a world-record 47.82 seconds from the tight inside lane, the first man under 48; he fled abroad as the dictatorship fell in 1979.
Q 22Which Ugandan set 5,000 m and 10,000 m world records and won 10,000 m gold at Paris 2024?
Joshua Cheptegei
Joshua Cheptegei set the 5,000 m (12:35.36) and 10,000 m (26:11.00) world records in 2020 and won world 10,000 m titles in 2019, 2022 and 2023 before his Paris gold.
Q 23Stephen Kiprotich won which event for Uganda at the London 2012 Olympics?
Marathon
The 'Mountains of the Moon' reach 5,109 metres and carry glaciers on the equator. Rwenzori Mountains National Park is a UNESCO site.
Q 14Which Ugandan national park is famous for its population of mountain gorillas?
Bwindi Impenetrable
Bwindi Impenetrable National Park shelters nearly half of the world's mountain gorillas in its montane forest; Mgahinga, in the Virungas, is Uganda's other gorilla park.
Q 15The town of Jinja on the northern shore of the great lake is celebrated as the location of what?
The source of the Nile
John Hanning Speke identified Ripon Falls as the outlet in 1862; the Owen Falls Dam drowned the falls in 1954. Its name means 'stones'.
Q 16Which Ugandan waterfall forces the Nile through a gap only about seven metres wide?
Murchison Falls
Murchison Falls, in the national park of the same name, squeezes the whole Nile through a cleft about seven metres wide before a drop of roughly 43 metres.
Q 17By 2025 Uganda hosted roughly how many refugees, more than any other African country?
Nearly 2 million
Uganda hosted nearly 2 million refugees by 2025, most from South Sudan and the DR Congo; they receive a plot of land and may work and move freely under one of the world's most open policies.
Q 18Uganda's two official languages are English and which other?
Swahili
Swahili was added in 2005. It is disliked in the Bantu south but widely used in the north, the police and the army; Idi Amin once made it the national language.
Q 19The Ugandan street food called a 'Rolex' consists of what?
An omelette rolled in a chapati
A Rolex is an omelette rolled inside a chapati, the name a play on 'rolled eggs'; it shows the South Asian influence on Ugandan cooking and has its own annual festival in Kampala.
Q 20Matoke, the staple food of central and western Uganda, is made from what?
Steamed green bananas
The East African Highland banana is mashed and steamed in its own leaves. Jackfruit grows everywhere too.
Stephen Kiprotich won the London 2012 marathon in 2:08:01, Uganda's second Olympic gold, and added the world marathon title in Moscow in 2013.
Q 24What is the nickname of Uganda's national football team?
The Cranes
The Cranes finished runners-up to Ghana at the 1978 Africa Cup of Nations, their best result; the Silverbacks play basketball and the Bombers box.
Q 25In which year was the British Protectorate of Uganda established?
1894
Britain formally declared the Uganda Protectorate in June 1894, taking over from a chartered trading company; protectorate status left more local self-rule than in a colony.
Q 26The Uganda Martyrs, executed in 1885-86, were killed on the orders of which Kabaka?
Mwanga II
Kabaka Mwanga II had 45 Anglican and Catholic converts killed between 1885 and 1887, most burned at Namugongo on 3 June 1886, observed as Martyrs' Day in Uganda.
Q 27About how many indentured labourers from British India built the Uganda Railway in the 1890s?
32,000
Some 32,000 labourers came from British India between 1896 and 1901; about 2,500 died, most went home, and 6,724 stayed on, their descendants dominating trade and cotton ginning.
Q 28By 2010, how many traditional kingdoms did Uganda officially recognise?
Five
Five: Bunyoro, Toro, Busoga and the largest kingdom, centred on Kampala, were restored in 1993, and Rwenzururu was recognised in 2009; Ankole was never restored.
Q 29Which rebel group led by Joseph Kony waged a long war in northern Uganda marked by child abductions?
The Lord's Resistance Army
The LRA's crimes include the Atiak massacre and mass child slavery; the conflict displaced millions before the group was pushed into neighbouring countries.
Q 30Which city is the largest in northern Uganda and was the hub of the region's insurgency?
Gulu
Gulu, the largest city in northern Uganda, was the centre of the two-decade northern insurgency and its camps for the displaced; it gained city status in 2020.