🏛️ African Capitals Quiz
Match every country to its capital city.
54 countries in Africa, and 54 capital cities to match them to. They range from Nigeria, the region's most populous country, to Seychelles, its least.
African Capitals Quiz at a glance
- Capitals to learn
- 54
- Subregions covered
- 5
- Most populous country
- Nigeria
- Largest by area
- Algeria
Capitals against real people, on the same questions — no account needed. New capitals rooms start every 5 minutes, rotating through regions.
Getting Africa’s 54 capitals right
Africa has more countries than any other continent, 54 in this quiz, and more capitals that most people have never had a reason to learn. The good news is that the hard ones fall into a few clear groups.
The largest city is somewhere else
- Nigeria → Abuja. Lagos is far bigger, but Abuja, built near the centre of the country, has been the capital since 1991.
- Tanzania → Dodoma. Dar es Salaam is the largest city and the main port. Dodoma, inland, was named the capital in the 1970s.
- Ivory Coast → Yamoussoukro. Abidjan is the economic centre. Yamoussoukro, birthplace of the country’s first president, became the capital in 1983.
- Morocco → Rabat. Not Casablanca, and not Marrakesh.
- Cameroon → Yaoundé. Douala, on the coast, is the country’s main port and business city.
- Burundi → Gitega. Took over from Bujumbura as the political capital in 2019.
- Equatorial Guinea → Malabo. Not on the mainland at all: Malabo is on Bioko, an island in the Gulf of Guinea.
Capitals split between cities
- South Africa → Pretoria. Pretoria is the seat of government, Cape Town of parliament and Bloemfontein of the Supreme Court of Appeal. The quiz takes Pretoria.
- Eswatini → Mbabane. Mbabane is the administrative capital; Lobamba is the royal and legislative one. The quiz takes Mbabane.
- Benin → Porto-Novo. The official capital, although much of the government works in Cotonou, the largest city.
Neighbours with near-identical names
- Congo → Brazzaville, DRC → Kinshasa. The two capitals face each other across the Congo River, the closest pair of capitals in the world outside Rome and the Vatican. To keep them apart: the bigger country has the bigger city. The DRC is Africa’s second-largest country, and Kinshasa is one of the largest cities on the continent. Brazzaville is named after the explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza.
- Guinea → Conakry, Guinea-Bissau → Bissau. Guinea is confused with its namesakes so often that it is commonly called Guinea-Conakry. Guinea-Bissau is the easy one, because its capital is in its name. (Equatorial Guinea, the third, is Malabo.)
- Sudan → Khartoum, South Sudan → Juba. Khartoum stands where the White Nile and the Blue Nile meet. Juba became a capital when South Sudan won independence in 2011, which makes it the newest country in this quiz.
- Niger → Niamey, Nigeria → Abuja. Both named after the River Niger. Niamey is on the river; Abuja is not.
Names worth practising
- Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). Usually shortened to “Ouaga” by the people who live there.
- Antananarivo (Madagascar). Known locally as “Tana”.
- N’Djamena (Chad). Called Fort-Lamy until 1973.
- Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). Means “new flower” in Amharic, and is home to the headquarters of the African Union.
Free points
Djibouti’s capital is Djibouti. Algiers and Tunis are a letter or two away from Algeria and Tunisia, and the capital of São Tomé and Príncipe is São Tomé.
Capitals of Africa
| Country | Capital |
|---|---|
| Algeria | Algiers |
| Angola | Luanda |
| Benin | Porto-Novo |
| Botswana | Gaborone |
| Burkina Faso | Ouagadougou |
| Burundi | Gitega |
| Cabo Verde | Praia |
| Cameroon | Yaoundé |
| Central African Republic | Bangui |
| Chad | N'Djamena |
| Comoros | Moroni |
| Congo | Brazzaville |
| Djibouti | Djibouti |
| DRC | Kinshasa |
| Egypt | Cairo |
| Equatorial Guinea | Malabo |
| Eritrea | Asmara |
| Eswatini | Mbabane |
| Ethiopia | Addis Ababa |
| Gabon | Libreville |
| Gambia | Banjul |
| Ghana | Accra |
| Guinea | Conakry |
| Guinea-Bissau | Bissau |
| Ivory Coast | Yamoussoukro |
| Kenya | Nairobi |
| Lesotho | Maseru |
| Liberia | Monrovia |
| Libya | Tripoli |
| Madagascar | Antananarivo |
| Malawi | Lilongwe |
| Mali | Bamako |
| Mauritania | Nouakchott |
| Mauritius | Port Louis |
| Morocco | Rabat |
| Mozambique | Maputo |
| Namibia | Windhoek |
| Niger | Niamey |
| Nigeria | Abuja |
| Rwanda | Kigali |
| São Tomé and Príncipe | São Tomé |
| Senegal | Dakar |
| Seychelles | Victoria |
| Sierra Leone | Freetown |
| Somalia | Mogadishu |
| South Africa | Pretoria |
| South Sudan | Juba |
| Sudan | Khartoum |
| Tanzania | Dodoma |
| Togo | Lomé |
| Tunisia | Tunis |
| Uganda | Kampala |
| Zambia | Lusaka |
| Zimbabwe | Harare |
About the African Capitals quiz
- How many countries are in the Africa quiz?
- 54 — every country in Africa with the data this quiz needs. Questions are drawn fresh from that pool each round, so no two rounds repeat.
- Is the capital always the biggest city?
- Not reliably. Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, but across the region plenty of capitals are smaller than another city in the same country — which is exactly where this quiz catches people out.
- How is Africa divided up?
- Africa spans 5 subregions — Northern Africa, Middle Africa, Western Africa, Southern Africa and more.
- Which capital city belongs to the largest country in Africa?
- Algeria is the largest by land area in Africa, at 2,381,741 km². Its capital is Algiers.
- Do any countries have more than one capital?
- A few do — some split their legislature, judiciary and executive across different cities. This quiz asks for the primary capital, which is the one listed in the table above.