Africa · Western Africa
How to draw Senegal from memory
Senegal 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
- 16.3 m
- Code
- SEN
Draw Senegal
Practice · draw from memory
Senegal
A four-step strategy for Senegal
- 01
Start by fixing the overall footprint. Senegal 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 Senegal
Nobody has submitted a score for Senegal 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
- 3.15
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Senegal
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 south edge is a ruler line, not a coast
About 8% of the perimeter runs in one unbroken direction along the south. 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.
It narrows sharply toward the north
The outline is 2× wider at the bottom of the shape than at the top, so the broad part belongs in the south. Most failed sketches here put the wide section at the wrong end.
Senegal 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.
Answer key: the real shape of Senegal
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 321 units
- Width to height
- 1.37 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 1
- Longest straight run
- 8% of the perimeter, along the south
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.72× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Senegal 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 Senegal is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Senegal. 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 Senegal 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.
Senegal by the numbers
Senegal covers 196,722 km², which makes it the 85th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 34th largest in Africa. The capital is Dakar at about 14°N, 14°W, and it sits in Western Africa. It touches The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali and Mauritania, and 100% of its area sits in one main landmass. The rest of the perimeter is water.
Next to Senegal: 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 Senegal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Senegalthis page | 196,722 km² | 16.3 m | Dakar | 1 | — |
 The Gambia | 10,689 km² | 2.3 m | Banjul | 1 | 0.05× |
 Guinea | 245,857 km² | 12.8 m | Conakry | 1 | 1.25× |
 Guinea-Bissau | 36,125 km² | 1.9 m | Bissau | 1 | 0.18× |
 Mali | 1,240,192 km² | 19.7 m | Bamako | 1 | 6.3× |
 Mauritania | 1,030,700 km² | 4.5 m | Nouakchott | 1 | 5.24× |
Draw these next
Countries near Senegal 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.
Senegal drawing questions
How big is Senegal?
Senegal covers 196,722 km², ranking 85th of 190 countries here by land area and 34th in Africa. About 16% of the area of Mali.
What is the capital of Senegal?
The capital is Dakar at about 14°N, 14°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 Senegal on a blank map.
Is Senegal hard to draw?
It is rated medium, and carries more outline detail than 60% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 1 landmass, with about 8% of the perimeter running dead straight along the south.
Which countries border Senegal?
Senegal shares a land border with The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali and Mauritania. The remaining perimeter is coast, which is the part that usually costs points.