Africa Country Shapes Quiz

About this quiz

Some countries are famous for their shape: the boot of Italy, the long thin ribbon of Chile along the Pacific, the jagged coast of Norway. Others are much harder. Could you tell Paraguay from Uruguay, or Chad from Niger, by their outline alone? In this quiz you see the shape of one country, with no names, borders or neighbours, and choose the right country from four, all from the same part of the world.

Each outline has north at the top and keeps the islands close to the mainland, such as Sicily and Sardinia with Italy or Corsica with France; lands far away, such as Alaska, Hawaii or French Guiana, are left out. Very small countries and tiny island nations, which would be little more than a dot, are not in this quiz. At the end of the round you see every shape you missed, with its flag.

Africa

Africa has some of the easiest shapes to remember and some of the hardest. Many of its borders were drawn as straight lines across the desert in colonial times, which is why Egypt, Libya and Sudan have such long, ruler-straight edges. The Gambia is a thin strip along the Gambia River, almost surrounded by Senegal, and Lesotho is a round country entirely inside South Africa: look for the hole it leaves in South Africa’s outline.

Map outlines: Natural Earth (public domain).