Blank map of Africa with all 53 countries

The map, without labels

Every outline sits where the country actually is, on one projection framed from 26° W to 52° E and 35° S to 38° N. Nothing has been enlarged to make it easier to spot: Madagascar is the long island off the south-east, 587,041 km² of it — more land than the 505,992 km² of Spain a wall map draws larger. The canvas is 1000 by 968 units, nearly square, because a continent running from 38° N to 35° S is as tall as it is wide.

It is drawn in Lambert azimuthal equal-area, centred on the middle of that frame — open water in the Gulf of Guinea — not the Web Mercator a slippy map uses. Equal-area matters here more than anywhere else on this site, because the classic error about Africa is its size: Mercator inflates land towards the poles, which is how a Europe-centred wall map turns Greenland into a continent. These 53 outlines hold 30,215,078 km², about 14 times Greenland — and Greenland is not a country and not on this map.

Only 49 of the 53 outlines are wide enough to hold a printed name at this scale. Cape Verde, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea and São Tomé and Príncipe are below that floor, so they stay dots on the answer key.

How many countries are in Africa? It is 53 here

There is no single correct number. The UN counts 54 member states in Africa; this map has 53, because our outline data keeps Somaliland — 168,492 km² in the Horn, drawn as its own country by Natural Earth and only partly recognised — and has no entry yet for Western Sahara, Mauritius or Seychelles. Sources resolve exactly those names in opposite directions, so one list says 54 and this one 53. The five groups below are the UN's own subregions.

Latitude is the continent's other organising idea: 35 of these countries sit north of the equator, 17 south of it, 9 within 5° of the line, and 15 in the 10°–20° N band the Sahel crosses — which contains Chad, Niger and Mali, the three largest landlocked here.

Four rivers that explain the shapes

Half the continent's borders fall into place once you know what drained them. The Niger swings north-east through the bend that gives Mali and Niger their size before turning south to the Gulf of Guinea. The Congo curves inward through its basin, which is why DR Congo is round in the middle and borders 9 of the 53 outlines here. The Nile runs north out of the lake plateau to the Egyptian delta, and the Zambezi cuts east to the Indian Ocean — Zambia is named for it.

All 53 countries: area, population and capital

Sorted largest first. Each name links to that country's drawing page, where the same outline is the thing you sketch and get scored on. Between them these 53 countries cover 30,215,078 km² and about 1.31 bn people.

Which African borders are the hardest to draw?

The detail column is measured, not guessed: it compares how much border a country carries with the area it encloses, then adds a penalty for every separate piece its outline falls into. That is why Cape Verde — 4,033 km², 12.78 detail, 8 pieces — heads this table as one of the smallest countries in it.

The mainland traps are at the other end. Lesotho is the smoothest outline of any sizeable country here, at 1.27, and people still place it wrongly: it has no coast and no river to anchor it, because it simply sits inside South Africa. The Gambia is the reverse problem — 10,689 km² of riverbank, obvious as a line and hard to put anywhere.

How to use a blank map of Africa

1. 01

   Print at A3, or fill it in on screen

   Use your browser's print command: the outlines print as plain black lines on white, and the map itself carries no labels. A3 leaves room to write inside the smaller West African states; A4 is fine for the big ones.

2. 02

   Draw the frame before the countries

   Africa is three coastlines and a stub: the Mediterranean strip along the top, the corner where the Gulf of Guinea turns north-west, the taper to the Cape, and the Horn jutting east. Once the frame is down, every country has a position to be wrong about.

3. 03

   Use the rivers as rails

   The Niger's bend places Mali and Niger; the Congo's inward arc places the DR Congo; the Nile is a straight line north from the lake plateau; the Zambezi cuts east across the south. Four lines carry half the continent into place.

4. 04

   Anchor the relationships people get wrong

   Lesotho sits wholly inside South Africa. The Gambia is a ribbon of riverbank inside Senegal. Guinea-Bissau is north-west of Guinea, not south of it. Egypt's Sinai reaches east of Suez. Most errors here are those four, not missing countries.

5. 05

   Redraw the same map straight away

   Check the key, mark what you missed, then print a second copy and fill it in again from memory in the same sitting. The second pass is where the learning happens; the game scores every country against its real border and reports back by compass sector.

One more drill: cover the answer key and name the countries by size, largest first. If your mental map holds São Tomé and Príncipe at 964 km² and Algeria at 2,381,741 km² in proportion — Madagascar is rank 44 of 190 worldwide — the rest falls into place around them.

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Blank map of Africa — questions