Random African Countries

How this African country picker works

You searched for a random African country, or somebody sent you a link, and here you are. Usually that means a geography quiz, a trivia round, or a decision about where to read about next.

Press Generate and your browser picks a country at random. Nothing leaves your machine. Change the Number box and it hands you that many at once, with no repeats. Copy drops the lot onto your clipboard.

There are also three filters:

• Starts with: type a single letter and you only get countries that begin with it.
• Contains: type a few letters and you only get countries with that string somewhere inside the name.
• Ends with: type a single letter and you only get countries that end with it.

Now, the number 54. It has a date on it, and the date is the interesting part.

What counts as a country

This matters more than you would think, because it is where most pickers quietly go wrong.

Africa has 54 sovereign countries that are member states of the United Nations. Not "country" in a loose, wall-map sense. A member state, with a seat and a vote in the General Assembly.

Algeria, Botswana, Comoros, Eritrea, Ghana, Lesotho, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Zimbabwe. Ten of them, so you can see the shape of the thing.

Here is the trap. The UN Statistics Division publishes a register called M49, and M49 is a list of "countries or areas". Both, in one table, in the same alphabetical run. Sitting alongside the 54 are dependencies and overseas territories that have codes because software needs somewhere to file them.

Read M49 as a list of countries and you will count too many. Read it as what it says it is, and 54 falls out cleanly.

How Africa went from four countries to fifty-four

54 is not a fact of geography. It is a number with a date on it.

When the United Nations started in 1945 it had 51 founding members. Four of them were African: Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, and South Africa, which was listed at the time as the Union of South Africa.

Then look at what happened in 1960. UN membership went from 82 to 99 in a single year. Seventeen countries joined. Sixteen of them were African. Cameroun, the Central African Republic, Chad, the two Congos, Dahomey, Gabon, the Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Togo, Upper Volta.

After that the list kept moving, in both directions. In 1964 Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged and became Tanzania, so two member states turned into one. Namibia joined in 1990. Eritrea in 1993. South Sudan in 2011.

Four in 1945. Sixteen more in a single year. The last one in 2011. That is how you get to 54.

So how many countries are in Africa?

Fifty-four, if you are counting sovereign states with a seat at the United Nations.

But if you have ever been told 52, or 53, and you are fairly sure you were told correctly, you probably were. Count backwards through the membership record and you can see it for yourself.

A textbook that says 53 was printed between 1993 and 2011, after Eritrea and before South Sudan. One that says 52 was printed between 1990 and 1993, after Namibia and before Eritrea. Neither is wrong. They are old.

The number did not change because Africa changed. It changed because the register did.

Which is the honest answer to "how many countries are in Africa". Fifty-four, today. Ask again in ten years.

The names that changed

Go and look at the UN's own record of who joined in 1960 and you will not recognise half of it. Dahomey. Upper Volta. The Malagasy Republic. Congo (Leopoldville). Those countries are all still there. The names are not.

A few are worth knowing, because they are the ones people trip over:

• Eswatini. Joined in 1968 as Swaziland. Renamed. The statistical register spells it Eswatini today.
• Cabo Verde. Joined in 1975 as Cape Verde. The register spells it Cabo Verde now, untranslated.
• Côte d'Ivoire. Joined in 1960 as the Ivory Coast. The register uses Côte d'Ivoire. Most English maps still print Ivory Coast.
• The two Congos. Both joined in 1960, on the same list, as Congo (Brazzaville) and Congo (Leopoldville). Leopoldville is now Kinshasa. Today they are the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and they are different countries with the same river between them.

Where a familiar older name exists, it travels in brackets alongside the current one, so a single-word answer cannot leave you guessing which country it meant.

Ways people actually use this

• Geography lessons and quizzes. Pull five countries, hand them out, one fact each. It beats going alphabetically, because alphabetical order means everybody gets Algeria and nobody gets Zambia.
• Trivia rounds. A random country is a question nobody at the table could have prepared for.
• Deciding where to read about next. Most people can name eight or nine African countries and stop. Pull one at random and you will land somewhere you have never thought about.
• Travel shortlists. Not for booking a flight. For breaking a deadlock when you have been staring at a map for an hour.
• Writing and worldbuilding. A real place, with real weather and real history, is a better starting point than an invented one.

Getting more out of the filters

• Starts with reads the first character of the name as written. The Gambia is written with "The" in front, so it comes up under T rather than G.
• Type guinea into Contains and you get Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea. Three countries, one word, and a decent quiz question on its own.
• A few names carry a second name in brackets, so Ends with sees the closing bracket rather than a letter. For those, use Contains instead.
• If a filter hands you fewer countries than you asked for, loosen it and run it again.

Questions people ask

Is Egypt an African country?

Yes. Egypt was one of the four African founding members of the United Nations in 1945. Almost all of it sits on the African continent, with the Sinai Peninsula reaching across into Asia.

Which African country is the newest?

South Sudan, which joined the United Nations in 2011. It is the most recent country to join, not just in Africa but anywhere.

Why does my textbook say there are 53 countries in Africa?

Because it was printed before 2011, when South Sudan joined. If it says 52, it was printed before 1993, when Eritrea joined. Both were correct on the day they went to press.

Are island countries included?

Yes. Six of the 54 are islands or island groups: Cabo Verde, Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Seychelles.

Can the same country come up twice?

Not in a single generation. Ask for ten countries and you get ten different ones. Press Generate again and the whole set is back in play, so a country can repeat across separate presses.

References

1. Growth in United Nations membership
2. United Nations member states
3. Standard country or area codes, UN M49