🧩 African Country Shapes Quiz
Name the country from its outline, with no labels and no borders to help you.
54 country outlines from Africa, with no labels and no borders drawn in. 6 of them are islands with no land border at all, and 16 are landlocked.
African Country Shapes Quiz at a glance
- Outlines to identify
- 54
- Islands with no land border
- 6
- Landlocked
- 16
- Largest outline
- Algeria
- Smallest outline
- Seychelles
Country Shapes against real people, on the same questions — no account needed. New country shapes rooms start every 5 minutes, rotating through regions.
Reading Africa by outline
An outline with no label, no borders drawn in and no sense of scale is a different test from naming a capital. Africa is one of the easier continents for it, because its borders were largely drawn in European offices: a straight line on the map almost always means the Sahara, and a wiggly one almost always means a river or a coast. Six of these 54 countries are islands, and sixteen are landlocked.
The ones you can name instantly
- Egypt. Very nearly a rectangle, with the Sinai triangle on its eastern edge. The Nile does not show in an outline, which is what makes it so plain.
- Somalia. The Horn itself — a long number seven wrapping the eastern corner of the continent.
- The Gambia. A narrow sliver following a river inland, surrounded by Senegal on three sides. Nothing else looks remotely like it.
- Lesotho. A rough circle with no coast, because it sits entirely inside South Africa — which is why South Africa’s own outline has a hole in it.
- Namibia. A tall block with a thin finger reaching east: the Caprivi Strip, drawn to give German South West Africa access to the Zambezi.
- Madagascar. The large island off the south-east coast, and the only large one here.
The straight-line countries
Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad all have long straight borders through the desert, and as outlines they are big angular blocks that look alike. Tell them apart by their coastlines rather than their interiors: Algeria and Libya have Mediterranean coasts, Mauritania faces the Atlantic, and Mali, Niger and Chad have no coast at all.
The ones that catch people
- The DRC. Vast and round, with one narrow corridor running west to a tiny stretch of Atlantic coast — the whole country has about forty kilometres of shoreline.
- Tanzania. Its north-western edge is cut by lakes rather than lines, which makes it look less regular than its neighbours.
- Eswatini. Small and almost square, tucked into South Africa’s eastern side. Often confused with Lesotho, which is larger, rounder and completely enclosed.
- The small islands. Cabo Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, the Comoros, Seychelles and Mauritius are all island groups rather than single shapes, so the outline is a scatter of dots rather than one form.
Borders and coastlines of Africa
| Country | Borders |
|---|---|
| Algeria | Coastal — 7 land borders |
| Angola | Coastal — 4 land borders |
| Benin | Coastal — 4 land borders |
| Botswana | Landlocked — 4 land borders |
| Burkina Faso | Landlocked — 6 land borders |
| Burundi | Landlocked — 3 land borders |
| Cabo Verde | Island — no land borders |
| Cameroon | Coastal — 6 land borders |
| Central African Republic | Landlocked — 6 land borders |
| Chad | Landlocked — 6 land borders |
| Comoros | Island — no land borders |
| Congo | Coastal — 5 land borders |
| Djibouti | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| DRC | Coastal — 9 land borders |
| Egypt | Coastal — 4 land borders |
| Equatorial Guinea | Coastal — 2 land borders |
| Eritrea | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| Eswatini | Landlocked — 2 land borders |
| Ethiopia | Landlocked — 6 land borders |
| Gabon | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| Gambia | Coastal — 1 land border |
| Ghana | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| Guinea | Coastal — 6 land borders |
| Guinea-Bissau | Coastal — 2 land borders |
| Ivory Coast | Coastal — 5 land borders |
| Kenya | Coastal — 5 land borders |
| Lesotho | Landlocked — 1 land borders |
| Liberia | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| Libya | Coastal — 6 land borders |
| Madagascar | Island — no land borders |
| Malawi | Landlocked — 3 land borders |
| Mali | Landlocked — 7 land borders |
| Mauritania | Coastal — 4 land borders |
| Mauritius | Island — no land borders |
| Morocco | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| Mozambique | Coastal — 6 land borders |
| Namibia | Coastal — 4 land borders |
| Niger | Landlocked — 7 land borders |
| Nigeria | Coastal — 4 land borders |
| Rwanda | Landlocked — 4 land borders |
| São Tomé and Príncipe | Island — no land borders |
| Senegal | Coastal — 5 land borders |
| Seychelles | Island — no land borders |
| Sierra Leone | Coastal — 2 land borders |
| Somalia | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| South Africa | Coastal — 6 land borders |
| South Sudan | Landlocked — 6 land borders |
| Sudan | Coastal — 7 land borders |
| Tanzania | Coastal — 8 land borders |
| Togo | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| Tunisia | Coastal — 2 land borders |
| Uganda | Landlocked — 5 land borders |
| Zambia | Landlocked — 8 land borders |
| Zimbabwe | Landlocked — 4 land borders |
About the African Country Shapes 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.
- Which outlines in Africa are the easiest?
- Islands, generally — their whole shape is coastline, with nothing borrowed from a neighbour. 6 of these 54 countries qualify.
- Does size help?
- A little. Algeria is the largest here and hard to mistake; Seychelles is the smallest and usually guessed last.
- How many countries in Africa are islands?
- 6 countries have no land border with any other. A further 16 are landlocked, with no coastline at all.
- What makes a country hard to recognise from its outline?
- Usually the number of neighbours — DRC borders 9 countries, so its outline is shaped as much by other borders as by coastline.