Africa · Western Africa
How to draw Benin from memory
Benin is a single continuous landmass, taller than it is wide. Lock that proportion in before you worry about any individual stretch of border. Its border sits in the middle of the difficulty range — enough straight sections to anchor you, enough detail to punish a careless stroke.
- Difficulty
- medium
- Population
- 11.8 m
- Code
- BEN
Draw Benin
Practice · draw from memory
Benin
A four-step strategy for Benin
- 01
Start with a tall, narrow mental guide box. Benin is much taller than it is wide, and squashing it is the single most common mistake.
- 02
Anchor one unmistakable feature — the straightest border section or the sharpest cape — and draw outward from it in a single continuous stroke.
- 03
Close the loop back to where you started. An open shape gets filled unpredictably and drags your score down.
- 04
Submit, read the nine-sector grid, and redraw immediately. The sector readout names the region you under-drew, and a second attempt typically gains 10–20 points.
Top scores for Benin
Nobody has submitted a score for Benin yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Africa
- Subregion
- Western Africa
- Outline pieces
- 1
- Detail score
- 2.32
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Benin
Each one is measured off the outline the game scores, not copied from a reference atlas: the proportions, the straight sections and the way the shape breaks into pieces are all properties of the coordinates your stroke gets compared against.
The west edge is a ruler line, not a coast
About 12% of the perimeter runs in one unbroken direction along the west. Rivers and capes do not do that; a border was drawn on a map. Straighten it deliberately — a wobbly line there throws the whole bounding box.
Benin is taller than it is wide
The finished outline holds a ratio of about 0.49 to 1, a vertical shape. Most failed attempts come from defaulting to a squarish blob — and unlike position, aspect ratio is never normalised away by the scorer.
The coast is 1.56× longer than its own silhouette
Measured against the smooth ring that would wrap it, the real outline is 1.56 times as long. That is where the missing points hide: bays, fjords, inlets. Do not try to draw all of them — draw the 5 deep notchs that change the shape from outside.
Answer key: the real shape of Benin
- Box on the canvas
- 216 × 440 units
- Width to height
- 0.49 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 1
- Longest straight run
- 12% of the perimeter, along the west
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.56× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Benin at least once. Seeing the shape first replaces the recall the score is meant to measure with tracing, and tracing always scores higher than remembering.
Why Benin is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Benin. It scales and centres both your stroke and the real border into the same box, fills them, and measures how much of the two shapes overlap relative to their combined area. That means you are never punished for drawing Benin small, off to one side, or rotated slightly — only for getting the shape itself wrong. The nine-sector grid then splits the real border into a 3×3 mesh and reports coverage per cell, which is how it can tell you that you lost the whole eastern edge rather than just handing you a number.
Benin by the numbers
Benin covers 112,622 km², which makes it the 100th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 39th largest in Africa. The capital is Porto-Novo at about 10°N, 2°E, and it sits in Western Africa. It touches Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Togo, and 100% of its area sits in one main landmass. The rest of the perimeter is water.
Next to Benin: its land neighbours
Size is what the outline has to fill, so comparing the countries that share this border side by side is the fastest way to get the proportions into your head before you draw.
| Country | Area | Population | Capital | Pieces | vs Benin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beninthis page | 112,622 km² | 11.8 m | Porto-Novo | 1 | — |
 Burkina Faso | 272,967 km² | 20.3 m | Ouagadougou | 1 | 2.42× |
 Niger | 1,267,000 km² | 23.3 m | Niamey | 1 | 11× |
 Nigeria | 923,768 km² | 201.0 m | Abuja | 1 | 8.2× |
 Togo | 56,785 km² | 8.1 m | Lomé | 1 | 0.5× |
Draw these next
Countries near Benin share border conventions and coastline styles, which makes them the most useful follow-up practice.
Working through one country at a time is slow. Take the blank map of africa and label the whole region from memory — it shows you which neighbours you have never actually seen.
Benin drawing questions
How big is Benin?
Benin covers 112,622 km², ranking 100th of 190 countries here by land area and 39th in Africa. About 9% of the area of Niger.
What is the capital of Benin?
The capital is Porto-Novo at about 10°N, 2°E. The game scores the shape of the border rather than the position of any city, so the capital and its coordinates are here to help you place Benin on a blank map.
Is Benin hard to draw?
It is rated medium, and carries more outline detail than 38% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 1 landmass, with about 12% of the perimeter running dead straight along the west.
Which countries border Benin?
Benin shares a land border with Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Togo. The remaining perimeter is coast, which is the part that usually costs points.