Africa · Eastern Africa
How to draw Djibouti from memory
Djibouti 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 is simple by world standards, which makes it a good place to build confidence — and also means a low score here has nowhere to hide.
- Difficulty
- easy
- Population
- 974 k
- Code
- DJI
Draw Djibouti
Practice · draw from memory
Djibouti
A four-step strategy for Djibouti
- 01
Start by fixing the overall footprint. Djibouti 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 Djibouti
Nobody has submitted a score for Djibouti yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Africa
- Subregion
- Eastern Africa
- Outline pieces
- 1
- Detail score
- 2.16
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Djibouti
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 10% 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.
Djibouti is close to square
Width against height comes out at 0.91 to 1, so the shape neither runs away sideways nor stretches vertically. Set that box first: with a near-square country almost every lost point comes from the coast detail inside it, not the footprint.
Close the loop before adding detail
Djibouti occupies a 401×440 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 Djibouti
- Box on the canvas
- 401 × 440 units
- Width to height
- 0.91 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 1
- Longest straight run
- 10% of the perimeter, along the west
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.32× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Djibouti 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 Djibouti is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Djibouti. 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 Djibouti 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.
Djibouti by the numbers
Djibouti covers 23,200 km², which makes it the 146th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 48th largest in Africa. The capital is the country itself at about 12°N, 43°E, and it sits in Eastern Africa. It touches Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, and 100% of its area sits in one main landmass. The rest of the perimeter is water.
Next to Djibouti: 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 Djibouti |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Djiboutithis page | 23,200 km² | 974 k | Djibouti | 1 | — |
 Eritrea | 117,600 km² | 6.1 m | Asmara | 1 | 5.07× |
 Ethiopia | 1,104,300 km² | 112.1 m | Addis Ababa | 1 | 48× |
 Somalia | 637,657 km² | 10.2 m | Mogadishu | 1 | 27× |
Draw these next
Countries near Djibouti 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.
Djibouti drawing questions
How big is Djibouti?
Djibouti covers 23,200 km², ranking 146th of 190 countries here by land area and 48th in Africa. Small enough to lie inside a square roughly 152.3 km on a side.
What is the capital of Djibouti?
Djibouti is a city-state: capital and country are the same settlement, which is why the outline the game asks for is a single tight loop.
Is Djibouti hard to draw?
It is rated easy, and carries more outline detail than 29% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 1 landmass, with about 10% of the perimeter running dead straight along the west.
Which countries border Djibouti?
Djibouti shares a land border with Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. The remaining perimeter is coast, which is the part that usually costs points.