Geography Quiz Arcade

Africa — Geography & Quizzes

Explore all 54 countries of Africa — capitals, flags, populations, and free quizzes.

Africa by the numbers

Africa has 54 countries, a combined population of about 1,424,854,794 — roughly 17.9% of everyone on Earth — across 30,047,905 square kilometres. That works out at 47.4 people per square kilometre against a world average of 59.4.

  • Countries: 54
  • Total population: ~1,424,854,794
  • Total area: 30,047,905 km²
  • Average density: 47.4 people per km²
  • Most populous: Nigeria (218,541,212)
  • Largest by area: Algeria (2,381,741 km²)
  • Most densely populated: Mauritius (637 per km²)
  • Least densely populated: Namibia (3.1 per km²)

The biggest and the smallest

By population the five largest are Nigeria (218,541,212), Ethiopia (123,379,924), Egypt (110,990,103), Democratic Republic of the Congo (99,010,212) and Tanzania (65,497,748).

The smallest by population are Seychelles (107,118), São Tomé and Príncipe (227,380) and Cabo Verde (593,149) — and those are exactly the ones people forget when trying to name every country on the continent.

By land area the order is different: Algeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Libya and Chad lead, while Seychelles, São Tomé and Príncipe and Comoros are the smallest. Population and area rankings rarely agree, and noticing where they diverge is one of the fastest ways to build a real feel for a continent rather than a list of names.

Languages and currencies

The most widely used official languages here are English (23 countries), French (22 countries), Arabic (12 countries), Portuguese (6 countries) and Swahili (3 countries).

Several countries share a currency: XOF, used by 8 and XAF, used by 6. Shared currencies usually mark a monetary union or a long-standing peg, and they are worth knowing because one answer often unlocks several.

Learn Africa properly

Working one continent at a time beats shuffling the whole world, because your memory for places is spatial and neighbouring countries reinforce each other. For Africa the three angles worth covering are the map, the flags and the capitals.

Do all three for the same continent before moving on. Each one reinforces the other two, which is far more efficient than learning flags globally, then capitals globally, then the map globally.

Regional map quizzes

Countries of Africa