Africa has 54 countries, and most people stop well short
Fifty four is the number the United Nations uses, and it is the number this quiz uses. Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Morocco and Ethiopia come out of almost everyone quickly. Then the board goes quiet. The states that go unnamed are rarely small or obscure in any real sense: Tanzania has more people than Spain and Portugal combined, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo covers 2.34 million square kilometres, second only to Algeria on the continent. They are simply not in the mental furniture most people were given at school.
We are not going to quote you a statistic about the average score, because we do not have one worth quoting. What we can say is what the board shows: the first fifteen or twenty names arrive fast, and then people slow down sharply. Play it once and you will see your own version of that curve.
The list of African countries this quiz uses
The 54 are the UN member states in the Africa region of the M49 geoscheme. The African Union counts 55, because it also admits the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which is the government claiming Western Sahara and is not a UN member state. That single difference is the reason you will see both numbers quoted, and it is worth understanding rather than memorising: how many countries are in Africa sets out who counts what.
Egypt sits in this quiz even though the Sinai Peninsula is in Asia, because the UN files it under Northern Africa. Every country in the board is a sovereign state, so dependencies and overseas territories are not here.
Tricks that make the 54 stick
Work around the coast rather than down a list. Start at Morocco, run east along the Mediterranean to Egypt, drop down the Red Sea through Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia, follow the Indian Ocean south through Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique to South Africa, then climb the Atlantic side back up through Namibia, Angola, the two Congos, the Gulf of Guinea and the West African bulge. That single loop gets you most of the continent. The landlocked interior, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, Lesotho and Eswatini, is what you fill in afterwards.
Do not forget the islands. Cabo Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, the Comoros, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar are six countries that no coastline walk will hand you. The method is written out properly in how to remember every country in the world, and the same coastline trick works on the full 195 country quiz.