Africa · Eastern Africa
How to draw Ethiopia from memory
Ethiopia 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
- 112.1 m
- Code
- ETH
- Attempts
- 69
- Avg score
- 97
- Best
- 97
Draw Ethiopia
Practice · draw from memory
Ethiopia
A four-step strategy for Ethiopia
- 01
Start by fixing the overall footprint. Ethiopia 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.
PlumCobraQuick facts
- Continent
- Africa
- Subregion
- Eastern Africa
- Outline pieces
- 1
- Detail score
- 1.74
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Ethiopia
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 east edge is a ruler line, not a coast
About 10% of the perimeter runs in one unbroken direction along the east. 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.
Ethiopia is close to square
Width against height comes out at 1.30 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
Ethiopia occupies a 440×340 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 Ethiopia
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 340 units
- Width to height
- 1.30 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 1
- Longest straight run
- 10% of the perimeter, along the east
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.14× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Ethiopia 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 Ethiopia is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Ethiopia. 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 Ethiopia 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.
Ethiopia by the numbers
Ethiopia covers 1,104,300 km², which makes it the 25th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 10th largest in Africa. The capital is Addis Ababa at about 8°N, 38°E, and it sits in Eastern Africa. It touches Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan, and 100% of its area sits in one main landmass. Being landlocked, there is no sea edge to help you orient it.
Next to Ethiopia: 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 Ethiopia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethiopiathis page | 1,104,300 km² | 112.1 m | Addis Ababa | 1 | — |
 Djibouti | 23,200 km² | 974 k | Djibouti | 1 | 0.02× |
 Eritrea | 117,600 km² | 6.1 m | Asmara | 1 | 0.11× |
 Kenya | 580,367 km² | 52.6 m | Nairobi | 1 | 0.53× |
 Somalia | 637,657 km² | 10.2 m | Mogadishu | 1 | 0.58× |
 South Sudan | 619,745 km² | 11.1 m | Juba | 1 | 0.56× |
 Sudan | 1,886,068 km² | 42.8 m | Khartoum | 1 | 1.71× |
Draw these next
Countries near Ethiopia 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.
Ethiopia drawing questions
How big is Ethiopia?
Ethiopia covers 1,104,300 km², ranking 25th of 190 countries here by land area and 10th in Africa. About 59% of the area of Sudan.
What is the capital of Ethiopia?
The capital is Addis Ababa at about 8°N, 38°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 Ethiopia on a blank map.
Is Ethiopia hard to draw?
It is rated easy, and carries more outline detail than 14% 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 east.
Which countries border Ethiopia?
Ethiopia shares a land border with Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan; about 10% of the outline runs dead straight along the east, because that frontier was drawn on a map rather than along a river.