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.
EritreaCapital: Asmara. About 117,600 square kilometers. The Dahlak Archipelago, off its long Red Sea coast, belongs to it.
EthiopiaCapital: Addis Ababa. The second most populous country in Africa. About 1.1 million square kilometers and no coast.
KenyaCapital: Nairobi. Mombasa is its second-largest and oldest city. It is a port on an island.
MadagascarCapital: Antananarivo. The island is the fourth-largest in the world. The country is the second-largest island country.
MalawiCapital: Lilongwe, the largest city. About 118,000 square kilometers. The UN files Malawi under Eastern Africa; wider lists of southern Africa include it.
MauritiusCapital: Port Louis. About 2,040 square kilometers. The main island and Rodrigues, with nearby Réunion, are part of the Mascarene Islands.
MozambiqueCapital: Maputo. The Mozambique Channel separates it from Madagascar and the Comoros. The UN files it under Eastern Africa; wider lists of southern Africa include it.
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.
SomaliaCapital: Mogadishu. The easternmost country of mainland Africa. It has the longest coastline on the mainland.
South SudanCapital: Juba. The Nile runs south to north through its middle. The river crosses a large swamp called the Sudd.
TanzaniaCapital: Dodoma. Dar es Salaam is the largest city and main port. It is the former capital. The most populous African country that lies entirely south of the equator.
UgandaCapital: Kampala. It has no sea coast. Its south takes in a large part of Lake Victoria, shared with Kenya and Tanzania.
ZambiaCapital: Lusaka, in the south-central part of the country. Eight neighbors and no coast. The UN files Zambia under Eastern Africa; wider lists of southern Africa include it.
ZimbabweCapital: Harare. Bulawayo is the second-largest city. It lies between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers and has 16 official languages. The UN files it under Eastern Africa.
Middle Africa 9
AngolaCapital: Luanda. The seventh-largest country in Africa. Its province of Cabinda is an exclave up the coast, between the two Congos. The UN files Angola under Middle Africa; wider lists of southern Africa include it.
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.
São Tomé and PríncipeCapital: São Tomé. The second-smallest African state, after Seychelles. Nobody lived on the islands until Portuguese explorers reached them.
Southern Africa 5
BotswanaCapital: Gaborone. About 70% of it is part of the Kalahari Desert. It is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world.
EswatiniCapitals: Mbabane is the executive capital and Lobamba the legislative one. Either is accepted. Named Swaziland until April 2018. The second-smallest country on the African mainland.
LesothoCapital: Maseru. The largest of the world's three sovereign enclaves. It is in the Maloti Mountains, with the highest peak in southern Africa.
NamibiaCapital: Windhoek. The driest country in sub-Saharan Africa. At the end of its northeast strip, Zimbabwe lies less than 200 meters away, along the Zambezi River.
South AfricaCapitals: Pretoria (administrative), Cape Town (legislative) and Bloemfontein (judicial). All three are accepted. Johannesburg is the largest city. Nine provinces.
Western Africa 16
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.
Cape VerdeCapital: Praia. Ten volcanic islands, 600 to 850 kilometers west of Cap-Vert. Cap-Vert is the westernmost point of mainland Africa and gave them their name. Also called Cabo Verde.
GhanaCapital: Accra. West Africa's second most populous country, after Nigeria.
GuineaCapital: Conakry. Sometimes called Guinea-Conakry. That tells it apart from Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea. Formerly French Guinea.
Guinea-BissauCapital: Bissau. The capital's name was added to the country's name. That tells it apart from Guinea. Formerly Portuguese Guinea. Independence was declared in 1973 and recognized in 1974.
Ivory CoastCapital: Yamoussoukro, in the country's center. The port of Abidjan is the largest city. Officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire.
LiberiaCapital: Monrovia. English is the official language. The country began in the early 19th century as a project of the American Colonization Society.
MaliCapital: Bamako. Africa's eighth-largest country. About 1.24 million square kilometers, with seven neighbors.
MauritaniaCapital: Nouakchott, on the Atlantic coast. About 90% of the country lies in the Sahara, and most people live in the south.
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.
NigeriaCapital: Abuja, in the Federal Capital Territory. Lagos is the largest city. Africa's most populous country, a federation of 36 states.
SenegalCapital: Dakar. The westernmost country of mainland Africa. It nearly surrounds The Gambia, which cuts its southern region of Casamance off from the rest.
Sierra LeoneCapital: Freetown. About 73,000 square kilometers, from savanna to rainforest. Only two land neighbors.
The GambiaCapital: Banjul. The smallest country on the African mainland. About 11,300 square kilometers, on both banks of the lower Gambia River.
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 sub-Saharan Africa map quiz asks the 48 countries the United Nations files south of the Sahara, Cape Verde to Mauritius. Find it names a country to tap. Name it lights one up to type or choose.
Read the full guide
Which 48 countries count as sub-Saharan
The list is the United Nations geoscheme. Its Northern Africa is Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia, so those six are drawn and never asked. Check Sudan against your class list: many textbooks count it as sub-Saharan and reach 49. South Sudan is asked here. So are Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad, although the Sahara covers the north of each.
Five buttons cut the 48 down
Each button shortens the round and zooms the map. Four are United Nations regions: Eastern Africa (18), Middle Africa (9), Southern Africa (5) and Western Africa (16). The fifth, Southern Africa, wider list, is the ten that school units teach. Thirteen countries are too small to tap, so a ring stands beside each.
The Gulf of Guinea coast, west to east: Ivory Coast, Ghana, the narrow strips of Togo and Benin, then Nigeria.
Three countries are called Guinea. Guinea and Guinea-Bissau are Atlantic neighbors. Equatorial Guinea sits far southeast, between Cameroon and Gabon.
In the wider southern list six of ten have no coast. Angola, Namibia, South Africa and Mozambique wrap around them.
Questions and answers
How many countries are in sub-Saharan Africa?
Forty-eight on the United Nations list, which this page follows: 18 in Eastern Africa, 9 in Middle Africa, 5 in Southern Africa and 16 in Western Africa. Lists that count Sudan give 49. All 16 of Africa's landlocked countries are among the 48.
Is Madagascar part of sub-Saharan Africa?
Yes. The UN files six island countries with sub-Saharan Africa, and all six are asked. Madagascar, the Comoros, Mauritius and Seychelles count as Eastern Africa, Cape Verde as Western Africa, and São Tomé and Príncipe as Middle Africa. Only Madagascar is large enough to tap.
Is there a South Africa countries quiz on this page?
Pick Southern Africa, wider list under Start from. South Africa is one country. The region is the ten school units teach: Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Southern Africa set gives the five on the United Nations list.
Which southern African countries have more than one capital?
South Africa has three: Pretoria is the executive capital, Cape Town the legislative and Bloemfontein the judicial. Eswatini, called Swaziland until April 2018, has two, Mbabane for the government and Lobamba for the king and parliament. The card shown after each answer lists them.