50 free Zambia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Zambia trivia quiz covers the landlocked heart of southern Africa: Victoria Falls and Devil's Pool, the Zambezi and its great dam at Kariba, Lake Tanganyika, Kalambo Falls, the Kasanka bat migration and the wildlife of South Luangwa and Kafue. It also covers the story of the country: Broken Hill Man, the Luba-Lunda kingdoms, Livingstone and Rhodes, Northern Rhodesia and the Federation, Kenneth Kaunda's 27 years, the copper economy, and the peaceful handovers since 1991 — plus culture and sport, from nshima and the kwacha to the 1993 Gabon air disaster, Kalusha Bwalya and the Chipolopolo's 2012 Africa Cup of Nations triumph. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital of Zambia?
Lusaka
It also hosts the headquarters of COMESA, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa.
Q 02What was Zambia called before independence in 1964?
Northern Rhodesia
The old name honoured the mining magnate whose company ran the territory; the new one comes from the country's great river.
Q 03Zambia takes its name from which river?
The Zambezi
The river rises in Zambia's north-west, loops through Angola and returns to form the southern border with Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
Q 04Who was Zambia's first president, in office from 1964 to 1991?
Kenneth Kaunda
'KK' promoted an ideology he called Zambian Humanism and ran a one-party state from 1972; he died in 2021 aged 97.
Q 05What national motto did the country's first president coin for his young, multi-ethnic country?
One Zambia, One Nation
Zambia has some 70 ethnic groups, the Bemba being the largest.
Q 06Which trade-union leader beat Kaunda in the 1991 election to become Zambia's second president?
Frederick Chiluba
A Pentecostal Christian, he declared Zambia a 'Christian nation' in the 1996 constitution.
Q 07Zambia declared independence on the closing day of the 1964 Olympics, making it the first country to do what?
Enter a Games as one nation and leave as another
Its athletes had marched in under the colonial name; the country's only Olympic medals since are a boxing bronze and a 1996 hurdles silver.
Q 08On what date does Zambia celebrate independence?
24 October
The prime minister became president that day in 1964, as the colony became a republic within the Commonwealth.
Q 09Which metal has historically dominated Zambia's economy, making up about 69% of its exports in 2019?
Copper
Zambia is Africa's second-largest producer and the world's seventh; the kwacha's exchange rate moves with the metal's price.
Q 10Zambia's flag is unusual for placing its emblem at the fly rather than the centre. What is the emblem?
An African fish eagle
The green field stands for agriculture, the red, black and orange stripes for the freedom struggle, the people and the country's mineral wealth.
Q 11The name of Zambia's currency, the kwacha, means what in several of the country's languages?
Dawn
It echoes the nationalist slogan of a 'new dawn of freedom'; one kwacha is 100 ngwee.
Q 12What is the local Lozi name for Victoria Falls, meaning 'the smoke that thunders'?
Mosi-oa-Tunya
The spray can be seen from 20 km away; the Zambian side lies inside a national park of the same name.
Q 13Which Scottish missionary was the first European recorded to see Victoria Falls, in November 1855?
David Livingstone
He named them for his queen; the Zambian tourist town beside the falls is named after him.
Q 21Whose company obtained mineral rights from the Litunga of the Lozi in 1888, opening the way to British rule?
Cecil Rhodes
The British South Africa Company then administered the territory for decades; Rhodes's scout Frederick Burnham found the great Kafue mineral deposits in 1895.
Q 22From 1953 to 1963 Northern Rhodesia was federated with Southern Rhodesia and which other territory?
Nyasaland
African leaders in the two northern territories opposed a union dominated by Southern Rhodesia's white settlers; it dissolved on 31 December 1963.
Q 23What is nshima, the staple of Zambian meals?
A thick porridge of pounded white maize
Q 14Victoria Falls is classed as the world's largest waterfall on the basis of what?
Its combined width and height
At 1,708 metres wide and 108 metres high it forms the largest single sheet of falling water on Earth, though others are taller or carry more water.
Q 15Kariba Dam, opened in 1959, created a lake so large that what operation was needed?
A rescue of thousands of stranded animals
Operation Noah saved around 6,000 large animals from the rising water between 1958 and 1961; the dam is shared with Zimbabwe.
Q 16Kalambo Falls, on the Tanzanian border at a Rift Valley lake's southern tip, is notable as what?
One of Africa's tallest single-drop waterfalls
It drops 235 metres in one leap, and archaeologists have found some of the world's earliest stone tools nearby.
Q 17Zambia's highest point, Mafinga Central, is on the border with which country?
Malawi
At 2,339 metres it is part of the Nyika Plateau range; most of Zambia is a plateau between 1,000 and 1,600 metres.
Q 18Zambia has how many neighbouring countries?
8
The link to Botswana is a tiny sliver of border in the Chobe District; Namibia touches Zambia via the Caprivi Strip.
Q 19Kasanka National Park hosts what has been called the largest mammal migration on Earth. Of what animal?
Straw-coloured fruit bats
Close to ten million bats descend on a small patch of swamp forest each October to December.
Q 20Which archaic human skull, up to 300,000 years old, was found in a Zambian mine in 1921?
Broken Hill Man
Also called Kabwe 1, it is usually assigned to Homo heidelbergensis and is held by the Natural History Museum in London.
It is eaten by hand, rolled into a ball and dipped into relishes of vegetables, beans, fish or meat.
Q 24Zambia's football team died in a 1993 plane crash after take-off from which African capital?
Libreville, Gabon
All 30 aboard, including 18 players, died when the pilot shut down the wrong engine after a fire; they are buried at Heroes' Acre outside the national stadium in the capital.
Q 25Zambia won its first Africa Cup of Nations in 2012 by beating which team on penalties in the final?
Ivory Coast
The final was in Libreville, yards from where the 1993 team had crashed, which made the 8–7 shoot-out win extraordinarily emotional.
Q 26Zambia's Kalusha Bwalya scored a hat-trick in a 4–0 win over which country at the 1988 Seoul Olympics?
Italy
He was spared the 1993 crash because he was flying separately from his club in the Netherlands.
Q 27Which Zambian won Olympic silver in the 400 metres hurdles at Atlanta 1996?
Samuel Matete
He was world champion in 1991; Zambia has never sent a team to the Winter Olympics.
Q 28Which African lake, sharing its shore with Zambia, has the country's most endemic fish species?
Tanganyika
Zambia has around 490 fish species; the lake is the world's longest freshwater lake and one of its deepest.
Q 29Which vice-president, a Zambian of Scottish descent, became acting president when Michael Sata died in 2014?
Guy Scott
He served until Edgar Lungu won the January 2015 election; Sata was the country's fifth president.
Q 30Who won Zambia's 2021 presidential election with 59% of the vote, defeating incumbent Edgar Lungu?
Hakainde Hichilema
It was his sixth attempt at the presidency; Lungu conceded on television, continuing Zambia's record of peaceful transfers of power.