These questions ask you to connect a country with its present national capital, sometimes from country to city and sometimes in reverse. Build a route through the region so that each name has a geographical neighbour and a distinctive hook.
Follow a route from the Horn to the islands
Begin in the Horn and the east: Ethiopia leads to Addis Ababa, Eritrea to Asmara, and the country Djibouti uses the explicit city name Djibouti City. Move south through Kenya–Nairobi, Uganda–Kampala and Rwanda–Kigali, then place Somalia–Mogadishu and South Sudan–Juba on the same eastern route. West of the Great Lakes, keep the full country name in view: the Democratic Republic of the Congo pairs with Kinshasa.
| Map stage | Capital chain |
|---|---|
| Southern mainland arc | Angola–Luanda, Zambia–Lusaka, Zimbabwe–Harare, Botswana–Gaborone, Namibia–Windhoek, Mozambique–Maputo, Malawi–Lilongwe and Lesotho–Maseru |
| Indian Ocean island arc | Madagascar–Antananarivo, Comoros–Moroni, Mauritius–Port Louis and Seychelles–Victoria |
Recall the route in chunks rather than as an alphabetic list. On the mainland, the similar L-starting capitals separate into Luanda for Angola, Lusaka for Zambia and Lilongwe for Malawi. On the islands, give each country one vivid sound: Madagascar has the long Antananarivo, Mauritius has Port Louis, Seychelles has Victoria, and Comoros has Moroni.
Reject the tempting substitutions
| Temptation | How to reject it |
|---|---|
| A famous port such as Mombasa, Massawa, Walvis Bay or Kismayo | Port importance is a different role. Return to Nairobi, Asmara, Windhoek or Mogadishu for the respective national pairing. |
| An older label such as Livingstone or Lourenço Marques | Check for the present-day city label. Zambia uses Lusaka, while Mozambique uses Maputo; Lourenço Marques is Maputo's former name. |
| The two Congo country names and their neighbouring capitals are collapsed into one pair | Treat the two countries and the two capital names as a matched two-by-two set. Read the full country label before choosing, and never transfer a city merely because the countries share Congo in their names. |
| A commercially or historically prominent city | Francistown, Blantyre and Zomba are memorable for other reasons, but the present national pairings are Botswana–Gaborone and Malawi–Lilongwe. |
| Swapping the island capitals | Run the island arc in the same order each time: Antananarivo, Moroni, Port Louis, Victoria for Madagascar, Comoros, Mauritius and Seychelles. |
Try it
Kampala is the national capital of which country?
- Uganda
- Rwanda
- Kenya
- Zambia
A Comoros guide labels Mutsamudu, the capital of Anjouan, as the country's national capital. Which city fixes the guide?
- Mutsamudu
- Fomboni
- Victoria
- Moroni
Which city completes South Sudan's national-capital mapping?
- Wau
- Khartoum
- Juba
- Kampala