BurundiCapital: Gitega, the political capital. Bujumbura, the largest city, is the economic capital. Lake Tanganyika lies along the southwest side.
ComorosCapital: Moroni. An archipelago of three islands, independent from France since 1975. The only member of the Arab League that lies entirely in the Southern Hemisphere.
DjiboutiCapital: Djibouti, which shares its name with the country. About 23,200 square kilometers. Under France it was the colony of French Somaliland.
MadagascarCapital: Antananarivo. The island is the fourth-largest in the world. The country is the second-largest island country.
RwandaCapital: Kigali, at the center of the country. It is 1,567 meters above sea level. Mountains fill the west and savanna the southeast.
SeychellesCapital: Victoria, about 1,500 kilometers east of mainland Africa. 115 islands, and the smallest country in Africa.
Middle Africa 7
CameroonCapital: Yaoundé. Its coast is on the Bight of Biafra. Its people speak about 250 native languages.
Central African RepublicCapital: Bangui. Six neighbors and no coast. Under France it was the colony of Ubangi-Shari.
ChadCapital: N'Djamena. The fifth-largest country in Africa. The largest landlocked one, at about 1.3 million square kilometers.
Democratic Republic of the CongoCapital: Kinshasa. Africa's second-largest country. The most populous French-speaking country in the world. Formerly named Zaire.
Equatorial GuineaCapital: Ciudad de la Paz, on the mainland, since January 2026. Older lists give Malabo, on the island of Bioko. Africa's only Spanish-speaking country.
GabonCapital: Libreville. Officially the Gabonese Republic, about 270,000 square kilometers. Port-Gentil and Franceville are its other main cities.
Republic of the CongoCapital: Brazzaville. Often called Congo-Brazzaville, to tell it from its larger neighbor. It lies to the west of the Congo River.
Western Africa 8
BeninCapital: Porto-Novo, though the government sits in Cotonou, the largest city. Formerly called Dahomey.
Burkina FasoCapital: Ouagadougou. Six neighbors: Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast. About 274,000 square kilometers.
GuineaCapital: Conakry. Sometimes called Guinea-Conakry. That tells it apart from Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea. Formerly French Guinea.
Ivory CoastCapital: Yamoussoukro, in the country's center. The port of Abidjan is the largest city. Officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire.
MaliCapital: Bamako. Africa's eighth-largest country. About 1.24 million square kilometers, with seven neighbors.
NigerCapital: Niamey. The sixth-largest country in Africa. Over 80% of it lies in the Sahara, and most people live in the south and west.
SenegalCapital: Dakar. The westernmost country of mainland Africa. It nearly surrounds The Gambia, which cuts its southern region of Casamance off from the rest.
TogoCapital: Lomé. Less than 115 kilometers wide between Ghana and Benin. About 57,000 square kilometers.
How this list was compiled: The 54 countries are the African member states of the United Nations: 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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_Guinea, checked 2026-09-19. The wider list of southern Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Africa, checked 2026-09-19. Sudan filed under Northern Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Saharan_Africa, checked 2026-09-19. 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; the two "largest shape" hints were checked against the areas of the drawn shapes. The former names of the capital of Equatorial Guinea that are accepted (Oyala, Djibloho, La Paz): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_de_la_Paz, checked 2026-09-19. The name Swaziland until April 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eswatini, checked 2026-09-19. The three capitals of South Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa, checked 2026-09-19. The second and later sentences of each detail line were read on 2026-09-19 in the lead of that country's article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ followed by the country's name as the quiz labels it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(country) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ireland for those two); no detail line names a flagged shape or describes a border that is contested. 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 francophone Africa map quiz asks the 21 African countries where French is an official language or the working language of the state, from Senegal on the Atlantic to Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Read the full guide
Which countries count as French-speaking Africa
In three of the 21, French is no longer official but the working language: Mali since its 2023 constitution, Burkina Faso since a December 2023 amendment, and Niger since its March 2025 charter. Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania use French widely, but their constitutions give official standing to Arabic and none to French, so they are not asked.
Where francophone Africa sits on the map
Seventeen of the 21 form one unbroken block, from Senegal's Atlantic coast east to Chad and southeast to Burundi. The other four stand apart: Djibouti at the mouth of the Red Sea, and Madagascar, the Comoros and Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. Six are too small to tap, so each has a ring: Burundi, the Comoros, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda and Seychelles.
Togo and Benin are the two thin strips on the Gulf of Guinea. Togo is the western one, beside Ghana.
Two Congos face each other across the Congo River. The Republic of the Congo is the smaller one, west of the river.
Rwanda sits directly above Burundi, both ringed, on the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Questions and answers
How many French-speaking countries are there in Africa?
This quiz asks 21. Other counts are lower when they drop Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, and higher when they add countries where French is widely spoken without legal standing.
Is there a labeled map of the French speaking countries in Africa?
Yes. Show me the labels first writes most of the 21 names on the map and leaves a ring to tap for the rest. Print labelled gives all 21 numbered with an answer key, and Print blank gives 21 lines to fill in.
Which is the largest French-speaking country in Africa?
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the second-largest country in Africa. It has more people than France, which makes it the most populous country in the world where French is an official language.
Why is Equatorial Guinea on a French-speaking list?
Spanish is its main official language. French was added as a second in 1998 and Portuguese as a third in 2010. Its two mainland neighbors, Cameroon and Gabon, are both on this list.