ComorosCapital: Moroni. One of the four smallest countries in Africa. All four are islands. Independent from France since 1975.
MadagascarCapital: Antananarivo. Africa's largest island country, about 588,000 square kilometers. Independent from France since 26 June 1960.
MalawiCapital: Lilongwe. Landlocked, with three neighbors. Called Nyasaland until it left British rule in 1964.
MauritiusCapital: Port Louis. An island country, a little over 2,000 square kilometers. Independent from the United Kingdom since 12 March 1968.
MozambiqueCapital: Maputo. Sixteenth largest country in Africa, about 800,000 square kilometers.
SeychellesCapital: Victoria. The smallest country in Africa, about 450 square kilometers. That is why the map shows it as a dot.
TanzaniaCapital: Dodoma. Dar es Salaam, the largest city, is the former capital. Tanganyika, the mainland, became independent from the United Kingdom in 1961 and later united with Zanzibar.
ZambiaCapital: Lusaka. Landlocked, with eight neighbors. The most of any landlocked country in Africa. Called Northern Rhodesia until independence in 1964.
ZimbabweCapital: Harare. Landlocked, with four neighbors. Independent as Zimbabwe since 18 April 1980. The colony was called Southern Rhodesia.
Middle Africa 2
AngolaCapital: Luanda. Seventh largest country in Africa. The total includes the Cabinda exclave. Independent from Portugal since 1975.
Democratic Republic of the CongoCapital: Kinshasa. Second largest country in Africa, about 2.34 million square kilometers. Independent from Belgium since 30 June 1960.
Southern Africa 5
BotswanaCapital: Gaborone. Landlocked, with four neighbors. Independent from the United Kingdom since 1966.
EswatiniCapitals: Mbabane (administrative) and Lobamba (royal and legislative). The smallest landlocked country in Africa. Independent from the United Kingdom since 1968.
LesothoCapital: Maseru. It has a single neighbor on every side. One of three such countries in the world. The other two, San Marino and Vatican City, are inside Italy.
NamibiaCapital: Windhoek. Fifteenth largest country in Africa, about 827,000 square kilometers.
South AfricaCapitals: Pretoria (executive), Cape Town (legislative) and Bloemfontein (judicial). Ninth largest country in Africa.
How this list was compiled: The 54 countries are the African member states of the United Nations, read off the member list at https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states, checked 2026-09-19. The five regions and which country sits in which: United Nations Statistics Division, Standard country or area codes for statistical use (M49), https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/, checked 2026-09-19. Capitals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_Africa, checked 2026-09-19; Ciudad de la Paz as the capital of Equatorial Guinea since January 2026 and independence on 12 October 1968: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_Guinea, checked 2026-09-19. Areas and area ranks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_countries_by_area, checked 2026-09-19. Landlocked countries, their neighbor counts, Lesotho as one of three countries inside a single neighbor, Ethiopia as the most populous landlocked country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landlocked_country, checked 2026-09-19. Dates of independence and colonial names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decolonisation_of_Africa, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_national_independence and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_date_of_formation, checked 2026-09-19; the 17 colonies that became independent in 1960: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_Africa, checked 2026-09-19. Sinai counted with Asia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_Asia, checked 2026-09-19. Sub-Saharan Africa is the M49 grouping of the same name: the 48 countries of Eastern, Middle, Southern and Western Africa, which leaves out the six of Northern Africa. Tanzania: Dodoma is the capital and Dar es Salaam the former capital and largest city (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzania and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodoma, checked 2026-09-19); the Africa list above still prints the older wording. Ivory Coast, Benin and Burundi, the official capital and the second city: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_multiple_capitals, checked 2026-09-19; Abidjan and Bujumbura are accepted as typed capitals, Cotonou is not. Gitega as the political capital since 16 January 2019, and Bujumbura as the largest city and economic capital: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitega and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burundi, checked 2026-09-19. Cotonou and Abidjan as largest cities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_Coast, checked 2026-09-19. Where two sources gave different days for one event, only the year is stated. Two shapes of the drawing that the points file flags as disputed are not on this list and are never asked. Positions in the hints were read off the drawing. Hints and detail lines written for this site. Licence: own work
The drawing: Drawn for this site from Natural Earth 5.1.2, ne_50m_admin_0_countries_lakes (scale 1:50,000,000), https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvkelso/natural-earth-vector/v5.1.2/geojson/ne_50m_admin_0_countries_lakes.geojson, downloaded 2026-09-19. Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection centred on 1°N 17°E. Outlines simplified; small islands are left out. One place is too small to draw at this scale and shown as a dot. Licence: public domain (Natural Earth terms of use: https://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/)
How it works
This blank map of SADC countries numbers the 16 member states of the Southern African Development Community, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania south to South Africa. The rest of Africa is drawn without numbers.
Read the full guide
Blank, numbered or named
The sheet opens blank. Choose Numbered to put a number on each of the 16 member states, or Named for their names, then press Print this map. Print the answer key gives the names on a sheet of its own.
A blank SADC map with islands and small states
Four members are island countries in the Indian Ocean: Madagascar, the Comoros, Mauritius and Seychelles. The last three, and Lesotho and Eswatini on the mainland, are too small to write inside, so each has a ring joined by a line. Lesotho lies wholly inside South Africa.
Membership can change. This list was read on the community’s own website on 1 October 2026.
Questions and answers
Which countries are in SADC?
Sixteen: Angola, Botswana, the Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
What does SADC stand for?
The Southern African Development Community, a group of 16 countries that work together on development, trade, peace and security. Its secretariat is in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana.
Is SADC the same as Southern Africa?
No. The United Nations list of Southern Africa has five countries: Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa. The community is wider: it reaches north to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania.