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 Southern Africa numbers the five countries of the United Nations list: South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini. 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 5 countries of Southern Africa, or Named for their names, then press Print this map; the answer key prints on its own sheet.
Two small kingdoms
Lesotho lies wholly inside South Africa, and Eswatini almost so, between South Africa and Mozambique. Both are small at this scale, so each has a ring joined by a line. Namibia and Botswana share a long border across the Kalahari.
Find South Africa first. Lesotho sits inside it, and Eswatini on its north-east edge, next to Mozambique.
Questions and answers
Which countries are in Southern Africa?
In the United Nations list, five: South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini. Many maps also add Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia and Angola; this one leaves them without numbers.
Which country is completely surrounded by South Africa?
Lesotho, a mountain kingdom in the east of South Africa. It is the largest country in the world surrounded by a single other country.
What is Eswatini?
The country called Swaziland until 2018. It lies between South Africa and Mozambique.