Click each African country on the map. How many of the 54 can you place?
Africa is the second-largest continent on Earth and home to 54 sovereign nations — more than any other continent. It stretches from the Mediterranean coastline of Morocco and Egypt to the southern tip of South Africa, from the Atlantic beaches of Senegal to the Indian Ocean shores of Mozambique and Madagascar. Along the way the landscape shifts constantly: the Sahara desert in the north, the Sahel belt, the dense rainforests of the Congo basin, the savannas of East Africa, the highlands of Ethiopia, the deserts of Namibia.
The borders you see on a modern African map were mostly drawn by European powers during the late 19th century "Scramble for Africa", often with a ruler and little regard for the peoples actually living there. That legacy still shapes African geopolitics today. Since independence — which for most countries came between 1956 and 1975 — names and flags have continued to change: Upper Volta became Burkina Faso, Zaire became the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan split off from Sudan as recently as 2011, and Eswatini officially replaced Swaziland in 2018.
Mastering the map of Africa opens up a continent of 1.4 billion people, thousands of languages, and some of the fastest-growing economies on the planet. It's a deeply rewarding challenge.
