Africa · Western Africa
How to draw Burkina Faso from memory
Burkina Faso is a single continuous landmass, roughly as wide as it is tall. 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
- 20.3 m
- Code
- BFA
Draw Burkina Faso
Practice · draw from memory
Burkina Faso
A four-step strategy for Burkina Faso
- 01
Start by fixing the overall footprint. Burkina Faso is close to square overall, so a lopsided sketch loses points fast.
- 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 Burkina Faso
Nobody has submitted a score for Burkina Faso 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
- 2.27
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Burkina Faso
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.
Both ends are pinched
The widest slice across the centre is 2.9× broader than either the northern or the southern edge. Place the two narrow ends early and the bulge between them cannot come out wrong.
Burkina Faso is wider than it is tall
The finished outline holds a ratio of about 1.37 to 1, a horizontal shape. Most failed attempts come from defaulting to a squarish blob — and unlike position, aspect ratio is never normalised away by the scorer.
Close the loop before adding detail
Burkina Faso occupies a 440×321 unit box on the game canvas. Fill that box with one continuous closed stroke first: the scorer compares filled area, so an open outline loses the interior it never enclosed.
Answer key: the real shape of Burkina Faso
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 321 units
- Width to height
- 1.37 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 1
- Longest straight run
- Nothing over 8% of the perimeter
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.28× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Burkina Faso 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 Burkina Faso is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Burkina Faso. 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 Burkina Faso 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.
Burkina Faso by the numbers
Burkina Faso covers 272,967 km², which makes it the 73rd largest of 190 countries in the game and the 29th largest in Africa. The capital is Ouagadougou at about 13°N, 2°W, and it sits in Western Africa. It touches Benin, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali, Niger and Togo, and 100% of its area sits in one main landmass. Being landlocked, there is no sea edge to help you orient it.
Next to Burkina Faso: 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 Burkina Faso |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burkina Fasothis page | 272,967 km² | 20.3 m | Ouagadougou | 1 | — |
 Benin | 112,622 km² | 11.8 m | Porto-Novo | 1 | 0.41× |
 Ivory Coast | 322,463 km² | 25.7 m | Yamoussoukro | 1 | 1.18× |
 Ghana | 238,533 km² | 30.4 m | Accra | 1 | 0.87× |
 Mali | 1,240,192 km² | 19.7 m | Bamako | 1 | 4.54× |
 Niger | 1,267,000 km² | 23.3 m | Niamey | 1 | 4.64× |
 Togo | 56,785 km² | 8.1 m | Lomé | 1 | 0.21× |
Draw these next
Countries near Burkina Faso 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.
Burkina Faso drawing questions
How big is Burkina Faso?
Burkina Faso covers 272,967 km², ranking 73rd of 190 countries here by land area and 29th in Africa. About 22% of the area of Niger.
What is the capital of Burkina Faso?
The capital is Ouagadougou at about 13°N, 2°W. 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 Burkina Faso on a blank map.
Is Burkina Faso hard to draw?
It is rated medium, and carries more outline detail than 34% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 1 landmass, with no straight edge longer than 8% of the perimeter to anchor it.
Which countries border Burkina Faso?
Burkina Faso shares a land border with Benin, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali, Niger and Togo, so the entire outline is made of these frontiers.