A Post About African Geography

...for want of a better title!

One of my goals on The List is to learn all the countries in Africa. (It's goal #33, in case you're wondering.)
My reason for this - asides from my geography education only going as far as Western Europe - is because whenever a geography question comes up on the BBC quiz show, Pointless, it's nearly always Africa-centric, or African countries at least form a large number of the best answers. There were a huge number that I didn't even know existed!

Since I'm almost at the point of saying 'Yes, I've learnt these', I figure it's a good time to blog about what I've been doing to try and learn all the countries and their position within the African continent.
There are 54 countries in total--55 if you include Western Sahara, which is a disputed territory.

The first thing I did was try to memorise a list of the countries. First going around the African coastline, then east to west in rows across the continent.

Forgot a few each time. Hm.

Next was to get a blank map and fill it in using Photoshop (like above!)

Remembered slightly better, but it was cumbersome.

Newest attempt was downloading this app:

And no, this isn't a sponsored post.

World Countries Map Quiz is completely free, no sneaky in-app purchases (unlike the first geography learning app I downloaded, which was swiftly deleted!)

It breaks the continent into five areas, and works with a simple drag-and-drop style, giving you a list of countries and spaces on the map to drag them into.

When you're done, you can check your answers, and it will tick or cross them depending on how you did. The really helpful thing is that if you get something wrong, it shows you the right answer, so you aren't stuck randomly guessing if you got more than a couple wrong!

If you answer everything correctly in a game...

Perfect!

Confetti!

Now you feel smart!

So it's a good app for checking memory of geographical location, especially since the countries on the list are in a different order each time.

I'm not considering this goal completed yet, as when it comes to listing the countries I still manage to forget one or two. Usually Botswana or Tanzania. Which is ridiculous, because they are right there.

But forgetting one or two is better than when I started this goal, and I was forgetting some 15-20 of them.

Just like learning anything else, I'll test myself again in a few weeks, and see how much I've remembered!