Africa · Eastern Africa
How to draw Tanzania from memory
Tanzania 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
- 58.0 m
- Code
- TZA
Draw Tanzania
Practice · draw from memory
Tanzania
A four-step strategy for Tanzania
- 01
Start by fixing the overall footprint. Tanzania 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 Tanzania
Nobody has submitted a score for Tanzania 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
- 1.58
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Tanzania
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 north edge is a ruler line, not a coast
About 11% of the perimeter runs in one unbroken direction along the north. 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.
Both ends are pinched
The widest slice across the centre is 1.6× broader than either the northern or the southern edge. Place the two narrow ends early and the bulge between them cannot come out wrong.
Tanzania is close to square
Width against height comes out at 1.03 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.
Answer key: the real shape of Tanzania
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 427 units
- Width to height
- 1.03 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 1
- Longest straight run
- 11% of the perimeter, along the north
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.16× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Tanzania 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 Tanzania is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Tanzania. 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 Tanzania 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.
Tanzania by the numbers
Tanzania covers 945,087 km², which makes it the 29th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 13th largest in Africa. The capital is Dodoma at about 6°S, 35°E, and it sits in Eastern Africa. It touches Burundi, DR Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, and 100% of its area sits in one main landmass. The rest of the perimeter is water.
Next to Tanzania: 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 Tanzania |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tanzaniathis page | 945,087 km² | 58.0 m | Dodoma | 1 | — |
 Burundi | 27,834 km² | 11.5 m | Gitega | 1 | 0.03× |
 DR Congo | 2,344,858 km² | 86.8 m | Kinshasa | 1 | 2.48× |
 Kenya | 580,367 km² | 52.6 m | Nairobi | 1 | 0.61× |
 Malawi | 118,484 km² | 18.6 m | Lilongwe | 1 | 0.13× |
 Mozambique | 801,590 km² | 30.4 m | Maputo | 1 | 0.85× |
 Rwanda | 26,338 km² | 12.6 m | Kigali | 1 | 0.03× |
 Uganda | 241,550 km² | 44.3 m | Kampala | 1 | 0.26× |
 Zambia | 752,612 km² | 17.9 m | Lusaka | 1 | 0.8× |
Draw these next
Countries near Tanzania 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.
Tanzania drawing questions
How big is Tanzania?
Tanzania covers 945,087 km², ranking 29th of 190 countries here by land area and 13th in Africa. About 40% of the area of DR Congo.
What is the capital of Tanzania?
The capital is Dodoma at about 6°S, 35°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 Tanzania on a blank map.
Is Tanzania hard to draw?
It is rated easy, and carries more outline detail than 8% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 1 landmass, with about 11% of the perimeter running dead straight along the north.
Which countries border Tanzania?
Tanzania shares a land border with Burundi, DR Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia. The remaining perimeter is coast, which is the part that usually costs points.