Africa,
at reading length.

The Roman cities of Tunisia, the Sahara of Libya and the Atlas of Morocco, with almost nobody in them.

Five towns in a valley, built by the Mozabites in the eleventh century and still run their way.

A waterfall to rival Victoria's, a desert coast, and a capital that surprises everyone.

A gap in the escarpment where the ground drops a thousand metres, with no railing.

Vodun at its source, the palaces of Dahomey, and West Africa's best-run national park.

A quiet lake west of Ouidah with fishing villages and hot springs on its shore.

Two and a half million people, a hundred and thirty thousand elephant, and space for both.

Drive onto the pan at night and there is no horizon and no sound at all.

The masks, the music and the cinema, in a country that has never traded on scenery.

Kassena compounds painted in black, white and ochre geometry by the women of the household.

The Nile's furthest source, the royal drums, and a lake almost nobody visits.

Hippos, birds and the Congo across the water, twenty minutes from the capital.

An active volcano with vineyards in it, ridge walking above the Atlantic, and the morna.

The smallest inhabited island, reached only by boat, with flowers and no airport worth the name.

Sea level to Sahel in nine hundred kilometres, French and English on the same road, and almost nobody else on it.

Black lava tongues from the 1999 and 2000 flows running down to the sea near Bakingili, with green already coming back.

A hundred forest elephants in one clearing, watched from a platform, by almost no one.

A second habituated group, and the walk in is as good as the sighting.

A national park that came back from the dead, and a desert massif almost nobody has seen.

Camels come down a gorge to drink, and desert crocodiles live in the pool below them.

An active volcano, a living fossil, and a Swahili stone town nobody visits.

Caught off these islands in 1938, having been extinct for eighty million years.

The best western lowland gorilla tracking anywhere, in forest that has never been cut.

A gorilla sanctuary on the Bateke plateau, two hours from Brazzaville.

The largest economy in francophone West Africa, and the easiest of them to travel.

The western hills, with waterfalls, mask villages and a mountain nobody climbs.

Whale sharks, the lowest point in Africa and a rift valley opening, in a country you cross in a day.

Seven islands at the mouth of the gulf, with the best reef in the country round them.

A lava lake, mountain gorillas, glaciers on the equator, and the okapi.

Volcanic islands, terraced hills and calm water, between Goma and Bukavu.

People have been travelling to see this country for two and a half thousand years.

Eight hundred kilometres west, a Berber-speaking oasis with its own language and salt lakes.

Four turtle species on one black beach, under a forest with drills in it.

A volcanic island six hundred kilometres out, with a crater lake and four flights a month.

Nowhere else has a whole intact modernist city, a steam railway and an unfished reef.

A hillside outside Asmara stacked with the wreckage of thirty years of war.

Rhino on foot, a monarchy in ceremony, and a country you can cross before lunch.

A wilderness gorge in the west with hanging bridges and no vehicles.

No colonial period, its own script, its own calendar, and its own year that starts in September.

Rock churches in cliff faces reached by hand and foot, with almost nobody else there.

The only place in the world where forest elephants walk out onto an ocean beach.

The railway from Libreville to Franceville, straight through Lope, overnight.

Six hundred bird species and four hundred years of river history, in a country you cross in a day.

The far south, a river mouth, a crocodile pool and almost nobody.

English, good roads, a short flight from Europe, and everything within a day's drive.

A village built entirely on stilts over Lake Tandane, reached only by canoe.

Saltwater hippos, nesting turtles, and a society run by its women.

Hippos, an island king, and a lodge with no road on the island at all.

The best walking in West Africa, and the rivers that made the whole region.

A rock face near Mali-ville shaped like a woman's profile, at the top of the Fouta.

Migration, glacier, reef and desert inside one border, with the infrastructure to see all four in a fortnight.

The desert north: Chalbi's salt pan, Marsabit's forested crater and the road down to Lake Turkana.

A whole country above a thousand metres, crossed on a pony, with snow in July.

Trackways in the sandstone at Moyeni and Morija, in the open and unfenced.

The best surf in West Africa, and the forest the pygmy hippo has left.

A lagoon behind Robertsport with mangrove, fishing villages and no visitors.

Because Leptis Magna is the best Roman city left anywhere, and hardly anyone has stood in it.

A black volcanic caldera in the middle of the Sahara with green lakes at the bottom.

Lemurs, baobabs, tsingy, spiny forest — none of it exists anywhere else on earth.

The largest protected rainforest in the country, reached by boat, with whales in the bay.

A lake with more fish species than any other on earth, and parks brought back from nothing.

A Malawian island inside Mozambican water, with a cathedral the size of Winchester's.

Because Djenne, Timbuktu and the Dogon country are three of the great sights of Africa.

A pyramid of mud at Gao, built in 1495 for the emperor of Songhai.

A medieval library in a sand-buried town, and a train you ride on the ore.

A hot spring under palms in a narrow gorge, and the best shade in the country.

A Hindu festival, a Creole kitchen, a French road name and a Chinese shop, in one street.

Six hundred kilometres east, a tenth the size, and the island Mauritius used to be.

Surf in the morning, cedar forest by lunch, and the Sahara the following evening.

The blue town in the Rif, and a mountain range most itineraries drive straight past.

Two thousand kilometres of Indian Ocean, and most of it still without a road to it.

Silversmiths, a fort, mangrove channels, and about as far from a resort as it gets.

Two and a half million people in a country twice the size of Germany.

The far north-west: Epupa, the Himba, and roads that need two vehicles.

The emptiest desert on earth, and a giraffe population saved by the people farming next to it.

The azalai still runs from Agadez to Bilma and back, a thousand kilometres by camel.

Afrobeats and Nollywood came from here, and it is worth seeing where.

The Idanre hills, with an old town six hundred steps up and nobody else climbing them.

Gorillas, canopy forest, Big Five and a lake shore, all within three hours of a capital you can walk at night.

Rwanda's newest national park, a recovering forest between Nyungwe and the volcanoes that almost nobody visits.

Rainforest to the shore, twenty-eight endemic birds, and chocolate made where it grows.

The largest plantation on the island, ruined, lived in, and quite unlike anywhere else.

Stable, straightforward, six hours from Europe, and the friendliest reputation on the coast.

The Bassari and Bedik villages of the south-east, up in the hills, and rarely visited.

Granite in mid-ocean, a palm that grows nowhere else, and tortoises older than the state.

No real roads and few cars — an island best measured in bicycle hours.

The best beaches in West Africa, with rainforest mountains standing behind them.

Eight sand islands in the far south, reachable only by boat, with no electricity.

Rock art older than the pyramids, an unfished ocean, and a poetry tradition still practised daily.

A decaying Ottoman and colonial old town by the harbour, being slowly repaired.

Mountain, desert, reef, bush and two of Africa's most interesting cities, on roads you can drive yourself.

Hole in the Wall and the Transkei green hills, and the Karoo's enormous silence in the other direction.

A migration to rival the Serengeti's, seen by a few dozen people a year.

A small park on the Ugandan border with elephant, and the Nile going through it.

More pyramids than Egypt, no queue at any of them, and a welcome people write books about.

A Christian Nubian capital on the Nile, with a throne hall that became a mosque.

Summit Africa's highest mountain, cross the Serengeti and sleep on the Indian Ocean, in the same fortnight.

The south and west: huge elephant populations, hippo crowded into shrinking pools, and no other vehicles.

A whole cross-section of West Africa in a country you can drive in a day.

An hour east of Lome: a lagoon, a decayed colonial town, and no visitors.

An amphitheatre on Monday and a dune camp on Thursday, in a country the size of England.

Vaulted grain stores stacked four storeys high, and almost nobody there.

Nowhere else puts gorillas, chimpanzees, the Big Five, a snowline and the Nile within one week of driving.

The furthest park from Kampala and the emptiest: Narus valley, the Morungole range, and cheetah nobody photographs.

Zambia kept the walking safari, the small camp and the empty park while its neighbours scaled up.

The second largest wildebeest migration in Africa, on a plain almost nobody has heard of, reachable only in the dry.

The hardest guiding exam in Africa, and a stone city most visitors have never heard of.

A mountain range on the Mozambique border that you walk into and camp in.

Berber-speaking Kabylie in the north, and the Tuareg of the Hoggar in the far south.

Ovimbundu in the centre, Bakongo in the north, and Ovahimba along the Cunene.

The Fon of Dahomey in the south, the Somba in the Atakora with their fortified houses.

Tracking with San guides, who will find in an hour what nobody else sees at all.

The Mossi kingdoms in the centre, the Bobo and Lobi in the west, the Fulani across the north.

One language, Kirundi, spoken by everybody, and a history the country is still working through.

The Santiago interior and the northern islands, with different histories and different music.

Two hundred and fifty ethnic groups and as many languages, from the Mafa terraces of the Mandara to the Fulani of the Sahel.

The BaAka in the forest, and the Sangha-Sangha along the river.

A desert people of the Tibesti and Ennedi, and among the most self-sufficient anywhere.

The anda — a marriage that confers social rank, and can take a decade to afford.

Bantu peoples along the river, and Aka forest hunter-gatherers in the north.

Baoulé weaving, Senufo sculpture, and Dan masks from the western hills.

Salt caravans still come up from Assal, and the Afar have worked that trade for centuries.

Forest hunter-gatherers of the Ituri, with a relationship to that forest going back millennia.

Nubian villages above Aswan and Bedouin communities in the Sinai and the Western Desert.

Bioko's first people, with their own language, and a history separate from the mainland.

The Afar on the southern coast, and the Rashaida who came across from Arabia in the 1840s.

One nation, one language, and a set of ceremonies that everyone in the country takes part in.

The lower Omo holds sixteen peoples in one valley, and the visits should be arranged carefully.

Fang across the north, Punu in the south, and Baka forest people in the interior.

The Jali families hold the histories, and the kora is how they are told.

Kente weaving in Volta and Ashanti, and the Dagbon drumming traditions of the north.

Age grades govern life, and the vaca-bruto initiation is danced in a bull mask.

Fulani in the Fouta, Malinke in the upper Niger country, Susu on the coast.

Samburu in the northern drylands, Maasai in the south, both still moving cattle between seasonal grazing.

One people, one language, and a kingdom that kept its independence by going uphill.

The Vai invented their own script in the 1830s, one of very few in Africa.

The Tuareg in the southwest around Ghat, the Tebu in the Tibesti foothills in the southeast.

The ancestors are present here in a way that shapes the calendar and the architecture.

The Chewa Gule Wamkulu masquerade is on the UNESCO list and is danced still.

Dogon on the escarpment, Bambara on the river, Tuareg and Fulani on the plains north of it.

A coastal people who fish with lanchas and, by tradition, with the help of dolphins.

Creole spoken by everyone, Bhojpuri in the villages, and French and English in print.

Village life at two thousand metres, where the year is still organised around the snow.

Makonde carving in the north, and the Makua women's mussiro face paint.

The Himba of the Kunene, whose way of life is genuinely intact and should be visited carefully.

The Gerewol, where the men dress and dance and the women choose.

Four large cultures and hundreds of smaller ones, each with its own courts and calendars.

Cultural villages near Musanze where former poachers now guide, and the beekeepers and potters of the Virunga foothills.

Descended from a shipwreck or a maroon community, depending on who tells it, and fishermen either way.

Wolof across the country, Serer in the delta, and the Diola of Casamance.

A hundred thousand people across a hundred and fifteen islands, most on three of them.

Mende in the south, Temne in the north, and the Krio of the peninsula.

Camel herding is the oldest way of life here and still a large part of the economy.

Ndebele wall painting, Zulu beadwork with its own grammar, and Xhosa initiation still practised in the Eastern Cape.

Cattle are wealth, name and argument. A camp of them at dusk is unlike anything else.

The Nubian villages along the northern Nile paint their houses, and have done for a very long time.

One of the last hunter-gatherer peoples in Africa, speaking a click language unrelated to anything nearby.

Their name means 'those who shape the earth', and the houses are the argument.

The ksour of Tataouine, and the underground houses of Matmata.

The Batwa, forest people of the southwest, and the Karamojong cattle-keepers of the northeast plains.

The Lozi live with the flood — moving cattle, homes and the king himself when the Zambezi rises.

Zimbabwean stone sculpture is the country's clearest contemporary export.

Chorba, m'hadjeb, and the Friday couscous that stops the whole country.

Funge with muamba de galinha, calulu with dried fish, and Portuguese pastries after.

Amiwo — maize with tomato and chicken — and fish straight off the Grand-Popo beach.

Slow-pounded beef and sorghum porridge, and braai wherever there is a fire.

To — millet paste with sauce — and riz gras cooked in tomato and oil.

Beans and plantain, ugali, and mukeke — a Tanganyika fish grilled on the beach.

Cachupa — the slow-cooked maize and bean stew — and grogue distilled from cane.

Bitterleaf and groundnut ndolé, plantain, and whole fish grilled on the sand at Kribi within sight of the boat.

Cassava as the staple, smoked fish from the river, and palm wine tapped in the forest.

Millet boule with sauce, and Nile perch off the Chari grilled on the bank.

Lobster off the reef, pilao rice with cardamom, and vanilla and clove in everything.

Cassava leaf, and chicken in palm nut sauce — the dish of both Congos.

Attiéké with grilled fish, and kedjenou slow-cooked in a sealed pot.

Spiced rice with lamb, and whole fish baked in a Yemeni clay oven on the coast.

Cassava fufu, pondu cassava leaf, and fish steamed in leaves over a fire.

Breakfast is ful and bread; lunch is koshary; both are older than most cuisines.

Pepper soup with fish, and malamba — palm wine sweetened with cane.

Eritrean stews on injera, and an Italian coffee culture that never left.

Pumpkin with maize, emasi soured milk, and braai everywhere.

Sourdough injera under everything, and fasting food that has made vegans of visitors.

Chicken in palm nut nyembwe sauce, and river fish smoked over a slow fire.

Benachin — one-pot rice — and domoda, groundnut stew with lamb.

The jollof argument is unwinnable; the tilapia off the grill with banku settles it.

Rice from the paddies, cashew as the whole export economy, and Portuguese coffee.

Rice with palm oil and fish, and the sour milk and maize of the Fouta.

Goat roasted over charcoal, maize meal, sukuma wiki, and coastal biryani that came in by dhow.

Maize papa with wild greens, and motoho — fermented sorghum drink.

Palm butter soup, cassava fufu, and a jollof Liberians will argue about at length.

Bazin with lamb and paprika, couscous on Fridays, and shorba on the table all Ramadan.

Rice three times a day, and romazava — beef and greens — with it.

Nsima with relish, and chambo — a lake cichlid — grilled whole on the shore.

Groundnut stew, and Nile perch grilled whole on the riverbank at Mopti.

Fish and rice from the river south, and the three-glass tea ceremony everywhere.

Dholl puri off a street cart, rougaille at home, and a fish vindaye that is entirely local.

Slow-cooked tagine, bread baked in the neighbourhood oven, and tea poured from height.

Prawns with peri-peri, and matapa — cassava leaf and coconut — with rice.

Game meat over coals, biltong on every counter, and German bread that is actually German.

Millet paste with sauce, and kilishi — beef dried thin and spiced, the best in the region.

Suya off the grill at night, egusi with pounded yam, and the jollof question again.

Grilled goat brochettes, cassava leaf isombe, tilapia from Kivu, and some of the best coffee grown anywhere.

Calulu — fish stewed with okra and palm oil — and chocolate made where the beans grow.

Rice and fish, cooked in one pot, and the national dish by common consent.

Grilled fish, coconut curry, breadfruit, and a chilli sauce that is not a suggestion.

Cassava leaf with palm oil, groundnut stew, and fish straight off the beach.

Camel milk, bariis iskukaris spiced with cumin and cardamom, and Somali tea with ginger.

Fire is a national institution; Durban curry and Cape Malay bobotie came from two very different arrivals.

Sorghum asida, kisra flatbread, and Nile perch grilled on the bank.

Ful medames for breakfast everywhere, kisra sorghum flatbread, and coffee spiced with ginger.

Cloves and cardamom from the Zanzibar plantations, grilled seafood at Forodhani, and ugali everywhere else.

Fufu with groundnut sauce, and gboma dessi — spinach stew with fish.

Friday couscous, brik straight out of the pan, and harissa on everything.

Steamed green banana with groundnut sauce, chicken cooked in banana leaf, and an egg rolled in a chapati on every corner.

Maize nshima with relish, dried kapenta from the lakes, and fresh bream out of the Zambezi.

Sadza with relish, and meat over coals wherever there is a fire and company.

Kabyle silver with coral and enamel, Beni Isguen weaving, and the pottery of Maatkas.

The Chokwe Thinker is the national symbol, and Chokwe masks and chairs are among Africa's finest.

The Abomey applique banners that recorded the kings' reigns, and Fon bronze casting.

Palm baskets woven in the delta panhandle, dyed with bark, and collected worldwide.

Lost-wax bronze in Ouagadougou, and the plank masks of the Bwa and Nuna.

Coiled agaseke baskets with pointed lids, and the drums themselves.

The panu woven cloth of Santiago, Fogo's pottery, and cane spirit stills.

Lost-wax bronze, beaded thrones and carved masks made on the craft street the same way they were three centuries ago.

Hunting nets woven from forest liana, and bark cloth beaten from tree fibre.

Toubou leather, Sara basketry, and silver from the N'Djamena market.

Carved doors, gold wedding jewellery, and the embroidered kofia cap.

Raffia weaving, Teke masks, and Kongo nkisi power figures.

Baoulé strip cloth, Korhogo painted cloth, and Dan masks carved for use rather than sale.

Afar mats and milk vessels, and carved wooden headrests that double as stools.

Kuba raffia cloth, Pende and Songye masks, and Katangese copper crosses.

Hand-blown glass in Cairo, Egyptian cotton, and papyrus made the way it always was.

Fang carving on the mainland, and Bubi basketry and wooden bells on Bioko.

Silver filigree from Asmara's goldsmiths, and coiled straw baskets from the highlands.

Swazi Candles, Ngwenya Glass from recycled bottles, and Gone Rural's grass weaving.

Handwoven shemma cotton, and Coptic crosses in silver, each region with its own shape.

Punu white-faced masks, Fang reliquary figures, and the carved harps of Bwiti.

Tie-dye and batik along the coast, and coiled baskets from the upper river.

Kente woven in strips at Bonwire, and adinkra symbols stamped by hand at Ntonso.

Bijago bull and shark masks, and the woven pano de pente cloth used as currency.

Fouta indigo cloth, Malinke weaving, and the leatherwork of the highland towns.

Maasai beadwork, Kisii soapstone carving, and kiondo sisal baskets made the way they always were.

Woven mohair tapestry, the conical mokorotlo hat, and the blankets themselves.

Poro and Sande society masks in the interior, and woven country cloth everywhere.

Tuareg silver crosses, tooled leather from Ghadames, and Berber weaving in the Nafusa.

Wild silk lambas, raffia work, and the Zafimaniry woodcarving of the south-east.

Blackwood carving, basketry, and the printed chitenje cloth worn everywhere.

Mud-dyed bogolanfini cloth, Bamana chiwara antelope crests, and Dogon carved doors.

Moorish silver, tooled leather cushions, and the painted wooden chests of the Adrar.

Model shipbuilding, and a textile industry that grew out of the sugar estates.

Tile cut by hand in Fez, tanned leather, and carpets woven to patterns held in memory.

Makonde blackwood carving, and the palm basketry of the northern islands.

Kavango wood carving, San ostrich-eggshell beadwork, and Herero doll making.

The Agadez cross in silver, and camel saddles and boxes in tooled leather.

Benin bronze casting still practised in Igun street, and adire resist-dyed cloth in Abeokuta.

Geometric imigongo panels in black, white and ochre, and the woven agaseke peace basket that is on the coat of arms.

Single-origin chocolate, island coffee, and carving in the plantation villages.

Sous-verre glass painting, and the strip-woven cloth of the Manjak weavers.

Pirogue building on La Digue, and coconut palm weaving still done by hand.

Hand-woven country cloth strips, and gara tie-dye in indigo and kola.

Aqal nomadic house frames, carved wooden headrests, and woven mats from the north.

Beadwork, wire sculpture and telephone-wire baskets, sold everywhere and made properly in very few places.

Dinka beaded corsets in colours that state a man's age set, and Azande basketry.

Coiled palm baskets from the north, Beja swords, and silver from the Omdurman souk.

Enamel-bright Tingatinga painting from Dar es Salaam, and Makonde ebony carving from the southern plateau.

Batik and wood carving around Kpalime, and pottery from the north.

Roman mosaic technique still taught, Nabeul ceramic, and Berber silver from the south.

Bark cloth from the mutuba fig, made in Buganda for six hundred years and now UNESCO-listed.

Tight coiled baskets from the Western Province, and copper worked on the belt that built the economy.

Serpentine carving, Binga basketry, and wire sculpture sold on every roadside.

Tassili's rock art records a Sahara with rivers in it, and the M'zab valley is still lived in.

Inscribed in 2017 as the seat of a kingdom that dealt with Portugal as an equal.

Four kilometres from Ouidah's auction square to the Door of No Return on the beach.

Independent since 1966, and the one African country that used its diamonds well.

One World Heritage site in stone, and a mask tradition that never became a museum.

Inscribed in 2014 — the drums, the dance and the making of them, together.

Inscribed in 2009 — the pillory, the cathedral ruins and the street plan of the first town.

The Dja Faunal Reserve is UNESCO World Heritage; the volcanic spires above Rhumsiki are the image on the old banknote.

Dzanga-Sangha for its forest, and Manovo-Gounda St Floris in the north, on the danger list.

The Ennedi massif and the Ounianga lakes, both World Heritage, both barely visited.

No World Heritage sites, and Swahili stone towns on all three islands.

Nouabale-Ndoki is part of the World Heritage forest shared with Cameroon and CAR.

A basilica larger than Saint Peter's, built in the founder's home village.

Not listed, but the chimneys are on every list of the strangest places on earth.

Virunga, Garamba, Kahuzi-Biega, Salonga and the Okapi Reserve — all five on the danger list.

Karnak took two thousand years to build; Abu Simbel was moved sixty metres to save it.

No World Heritage sites, and a colonial architecture that has been very little studied.

The first modernist city anywhere to be inscribed as a World Heritage site, in 2017.

No World Heritage sites, and a ceremonial calendar that has never been interrupted.

The Aksumite stelae, and the seventeenth-century castles of Gondar built by Fasilides.

Two World Heritage sites: the forest-savanna mosaic, and the falls on the Ivindo.

The Wassu stone circles are a thousand years old; the river route is four hundred.

Ghana asked the diaspora to come back, and a great many people did.

The whole archipelago is a UNESCO biosphere reserve, run with the island communities.

Mount Nimba is a World Heritage site for its endemic toad, viviparous, that lives on the ridge.

The oldest continuously inhabited Swahili settlement, carved doors, coral rag walls and no room for a car.

A World Heritage site shared with South Africa, for its landscape and its San rock art.

Monrovia's nineteenth-century houses are the architecture of a return that did not go simply.

Leptis, Sabratha, Cyrene, Ghadames and the Acacus rock art — every one on the World Heritage list.

Île Sainte-Marie's pirate cemetery, and the Merina kingdom that unified the island.

The first freshwater national park in the world, listed for its cichlids.

Djenne, Timbuktu, Bandiagara and the Tomb of Askia — every one of them on the danger list.

Family libraries in Chinguetti holding astronomy, law and poetry from the middle ages.

The mountain where escaped slaves lived at the top, and a world heritage site for that reason.

Fez, Marrakesh, Meknes and Rabat — four capitals, each of a different dynasty.

Ibo, Angoche and Sofala — Indian Ocean trading towns older than the Portuguese.

A diamond town the desert has taken back, and the German colonial coast at Lüderitz.

Agadez, the Air and Tenere reserves, and W National Park — desert, mountain and river.

The Benin bronzes are the reason half the museums of Europe have a Nigeria problem.

The Kigali Genocide Memorial is where any honest visit to Rwanda starts, and it explains everything that came after.

The whole of Principe is a UNESCO biosphere reserve, and it is seven thousand people.

The old colonial capital on its island in the river mouth, with the Faidherbe bridge.

A thousand kilometres out, with a hundred thousand giant tortoises and almost no people.

Freetown grew around one tree where freed slaves gave thanks in 1792.

Mogadishu, Merca and Barawa were trading cities when Europe had none on this ocean.

The Sterkfontein caves have produced more early hominin fossils than any other site on the planet.

No World Heritage sites, and a heritage that is living rather than ruined.

Gebel Barkal was the holy mountain of two kingdoms, and the temple of Amun is cut into it.

Olduvai Gorge holds the earliest human record; the coast holds a thousand years of Indian Ocean trade.

The Batammariba landscape has been a World Heritage site since 2004, and is still lived in.

Tunis, Sousse and Kairouan — Kairouan's mosque is among the oldest in the Maghreb.

Royal drums, regalia and clan structures that survived the protectorate, the 1966 crisis and the 1970s.

World Heritage since 1989, shared with Zimbabwe, and named by the Kololo long before anyone renamed it.

Khami's terraces, and the Matobo hills where Mzilikazi and Rhodes are both buried.

The Casbah stacked above the harbour, and the boulevards the French cut below it.

A bay closed by a sand spit and a skyline that went up fast, and a quieter colonial port south.

A port that never stops, a colonial capital, and the seat of a kingdom.

Not really cities — two safari towns with airstrips, which is what the country needs.

A capital that fills for FESPACO, and a second city with the country's best music.

A lakeside city with a long promenade, and the political capital up in the hills.

A clifftop capital on Santiago, and the port city on Sao Vicente where the music lives.

The port that moves the country and the hill capital that governs it, ninety minutes apart by air and nothing alike.

On the Ubangi, opposite the Congo, with the Marche Central at the middle of it.

A capital on the Chari, opposite Cameroon, with the largest market in the region.

A volcanic harbour capital, and Anjouan's stone town under a citadel.

A river capital looking across at Kinshasa, and an Atlantic oil port with the beaches.

The Plateau's towers, the Ébrié lagoon, and a nightlife the region measures itself against.

A French-Arab port city with a covered market, and the Horn's busiest container terminal.

One of the largest cities in Africa, facing Brazzaville, and the mining capital in the south.

Twenty million people on the Nile, and a Mediterranean city that remembers being Greek.

The island capital in a drowned crater, and the mainland's largest city on the coast.

One a cool art-deco plateau town, the other a coral-block Ottoman port on the sea.

A small capital in the hills, and the commercial town and market in the middle.

Founded 1886, at 2,355 metres, and the diplomatic capital of the continent.

An Atlantic capital, and an oil town on an island at the Ogooue delta.

A small capital on an island, and the much larger market town that outgrew it.

Accra on the Atlantic, and Kumasi's Kejetia — one of the largest markets in West Africa.

A small Portuguese-built capital with a decaying Bissau Velho quarter and very good music.

A capital on a peninsula, with the Grande Mosquee and the sea on both sides.

The only capital on earth with a national park inside the city limits, and lions in sight of the skyline.

A small capital on the Caledon, with the border post at the end of the main street.

A capital on a peninsula between the Atlantic and the Mesurado, rebuilt and rebuilding.

An Ottoman medina inside Italian arcades in Tripoli, and Benghazi rebuilding.

A capital built up twelve hills, with stairs instead of streets in half of it.

A quiet capital, and an older commercial city with the country's first church in it.

A capital sprawling both sides of the Niger, and a port town built on three islands.

A capital built from nothing in 1958, and a port with the world's biggest ship graveyard.

A working port and capital, with a market, a waterfront and the Champ de Mars.

Jemaa el-Fnaa at dusk, and the Atlantic modernism of Casablanca an hour up the road.

Wide avenues, a Mediterranean seafront, and the market Eiffel's company built.

Windhoek on the highveld, and Swakopmund where German architecture meets Atlantic fog.

A river capital with the best museum in the Sahel, and a caravan city at the desert edge.

Lagos on the lagoon, purpose-built Abuja in the middle, and Kano's thousand-year-old walls.

Built along ridge lines, swept every morning, and with a monthly Umuganda when the whole city cleans it together.

A small Portuguese colonial capital with a fort, a market and a cathedral.

The most westerly city in Africa, on a peninsula, with the ocean on three sides.

One of the smallest capitals in the world, with a clock tower and a market.

Krio board houses on the hills, the estuary below, and mountains directly behind.

A white Indian Ocean capital rebuilding, and a highland city that has been quiet for thirty years.

One built around a mountain and a harbour, the other on a gold reef, and nothing about them is alike.

A river port that became a capital in 2011 and has been building ever since.

Two cities facing each other across the confluence, one colonial grid and one enormous souk.

Harbour of peace: the ferry terminal, the fish market at Kivukoni, and the dhows still working the channel.

The only capital on a border, with the biggest market in the region behind the beach.

Tunis at the head of its lake, and Sfax's walled medina working as a medina still.

A capital built across hills and traffic, with the Gaddafi Mosque minaret giving the best view of all of it.

The centre of everything: Kabwata market, the Great East Road, and the flights that get you to the parks.

Harare on the highveld, and Bulawayo's wide colonial grid built for turning an ox wagon.

Fennec fox, addax and the last Saharan cheetah, all of them nocturnal and all of them rare.

The palanca negra gigante lives in Angola and nowhere else, and was thought extinct until 2004.

Lion, elephant, buffalo and cheetah in one of the last strongholds of the West African lion.

Chobe holds more elephant than anywhere on earth, and they come to the river at four.

A lake outside Banfora with a resident hippo pod, worked by fishermen in pirogues.

Montane forest continuous with Rwanda's Nyungwe, with chimpanzee and colobus in it.

Boa Vista is one of the largest loggerhead nesting sites in the world.

Forest elephants, drills and chimpanzees in Korup and Dja — one of the oldest and least disturbed rainforests in Africa.

Habituated groups tracked on foot, with far fewer visitors than in the east.

Zakouma's buffalo move in herds of over a thousand, and the Kordofan giraffe with them.

A metre and a half across, found on Anjouan and Moheli and nowhere else.

Smaller, redder and harder to see than mountain gorillas, and tracked through swamp forest.

Pygmy hippo and chimpanzees at Taï, and Comoé's savanna in the north-east.

They come into the Gulf of Tadjoura from November, in numbers, close to shore.

Virunga's gorillas in the east, and the okapi in the Ituri forest, which lives nowhere else.

Two million migrating birds use the Delta and the Red Sea coast as a flyway each year.

Bioko has seven species, several of them found on that island and nowhere else.

Wild ass in the Danakil, dugong and turtle in the Dahlak archipelago.

Black and white rhino, tracked on foot, in a private reserve that has never lost one to poaching.

The gelada lives nowhere else on earth, and grazes the Simien escarpment in troops of hundreds.

Habituated gorillas at Loango, and mandrill hordes at Lope that run to hundreds.

In a country you can drive across in twenty minutes. It is one of the great birding places.

Elephants that walk into the camp waterhole at Mole, and forest elephants at Ankasa.

The hippos of Orango swim in the sea between islands, which almost no others do.

One of the best-studied wild chimpanzee groups anywhere, and one that uses stone tools.

The Big Five, plus the reticulated giraffe and Grevy's zebra that live nowhere south of here.

The lammergeier breeds on the Drakensberg escarpment, and eland are back in the reserves.

Nocturnal, solitary, forest-dwelling, and one of the rarest large mammals in Africa.

Barbary sheep in the Acacus, dorcas gazelle on the gravel plains, and very little else.

A hundred and seven species and subspecies of lemur, every one of them endemic.

Hundreds of endemic cichlids in the lake, and the big five back in the parks on shore.

The Gourma herd makes the longest elephant migration in Africa, on a loop into Burkina Faso.

Two million wading birds winter here, on the largest tidal flats in West Africa.

The dodo is gone, but the pink pigeon and the kestrel were both brought back from single figures.

Macaques in the cedar forest above Azrou, and goats standing in the argan trees near Essaouira.

A park that lost almost everything in the war and has spent twenty years getting it back.

Elephant and rhino that walk sixty kilometres between water, and lion that hunt seals.

About six hundred of them at Kouré, the only wild population left in the whole of West Africa.

Yankari's elephant herds, and Gashaka-Gumti's forest chimpanzees on the Cameroon border.

Ten habituated families on the Virunga slopes, one hour with them, eight people at a time.

Twenty-eight species live on these islands and nowhere else — one of the highest rates on earth.

Three million migrating birds winter in the Djoudj — one of the great bird sites on earth.

The black parrot, the magpie robin, and giant tortoises that live free on Curieuse.

An island in the Moa river with one of the highest primate densities anywhere.

Speke's gazelle and dibatag inland, and turtles, dugong and whale sharks offshore.

Kruger and the private Sabi Sands reserves beside it, where the leopards have been watched for generations.

White-eared kob, tiang and Mongalla gazelle — counted at over a million animals.

Dinder on the Ethiopian border holds lion, giraffe and roan; the reefs hold everything else.

Lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino, plus the largest elephant herds left in East Africa.

Elephant, buffalo and a great many butterflies in the largest park in the country.

Ichkeul's wintering waterfowl, and the desert fox and gazelle of the south.

Mountain gorillas in Bwindi, chimpanzees in Kibale, and tree-climbing lions in the Ishasha sector.

The South Luangwa has one of the densest leopard populations in Africa, and the best chance of seeing one hunting.

Forty thousand elephant in Hwange, drinking at pumped pans through the dry season.

Volcanic spires in the Hoggar, and a sandstone plateau at Tassili n'Ajjer eroded into streets.

Pungo Andongo's monoliths in the north, and the Namib running the whole southern coast.

The Atakora hills in the northwest, and the Pendjari river running along the park.

Water in the north, salt pans in the middle, and Kalahari sand for the rest of it.

Cascades, sugarcane and the Karfiguela falls where the land drops off the plateau.

A ridge running the length of the country, with the Nile on one side and the Congo on the other.

Desert dunes on Boa Vista and cloud forest on Santo Antao, in the same archipelago.

The Cameroon Volcanic Line runs from the Gulf of Guinea to the Mandara mountains, changing the landscape every two hours of driving.

The northern edge of the second largest rainforest on earth, and it starts here.

A sandstone massif eroded into arches, towers and canyons, with water at the bottom of them.

Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli, each volcanic, each different, and Mayotte disputed.

Two thirds of the country is rainforest, and much of it has never had a road in it.

Rainforest in the south-west, a lagoon coast, and savanna running north to Mali.

Three tectonic plates pulling apart, and you can stand in the crack.

Glaciers on the Rwenzori, volcanoes in the Virungas, and the deepest forest in Africa between them.

A green ribbon a few kilometres wide, and sand for a thousand kilometres either side of it.

A collapsed volcanic crater in the south of Bioko, forested, and reached only on foot.

The plateau drops two thousand metres to the Red Sea in about ninety kilometres.

Fourteen hundred metres in the west down to two hundred in the east, in sixty kilometres.

The Rift Valley cuts the whole country in half, with highlands either side of it.

One of the most forested countries on earth, and eleven per cent of it in national parks.

Salt mangrove at the mouth, freshwater swamp in the middle, dry savanna at the top.

Rainforest and lagoon in the south, transitional woodland through the middle, savanna at Mole.

The tidal range here is five metres, and the channels between the islands change with it.

The Niger, the Senegal and the Gambia all begin within a hundred kilometres of each other.

The escarpment drops away below the Naivasha road, holding a chain of soda lakes and dormant volcanoes.

Basalt highlands cut by river gorges, and the roof of southern Africa.

Liberia holds about forty per cent of what is left of it.

The Ubari sand sea in the southwest, and the green Jebel Akhdar behind Benghazi.

Rainforest east, highlands centre, spiny forest south, dry deciduous west, and reef all round.

The Rift Valley floor with the lake in it, and Mulanje standing three thousand metres above the tea.

The river runs north into the Sahara, thinks better of it, and turns southeast.

A sandstone plateau cut by palm-filled canyons, with the old caravan towns in them.

Lagoon all the way round, sugar cane across the plain, and gorges cut into the plateau.

Palm oases strung along the Draa, and gorges cut red through the Dades and the Todra.

Coral reef the whole coast, miombo woodland inland, and the Rift's southern end at Gorongosa.

Fifty-five million years old, and dunes at Sossusvlei three hundred metres high.

Granite mountains standing two thousand metres out of the sand, with guelta pools in them.

Niger delta mangrove in the south, rainforest, savanna, and the Sahel at the Niger border.

Almost every hillside in Rwanda is farmed in contour terraces — the landscape is entirely made by hand.

Rainforest covering a third of Sao Tome, from the peaks down to the shore.

The Sine-Saloum mangrove delta, the Casamance forest, and Sahel sand in the north.

Granite in the inner islands, coral atolls in the outer, and a thousand kilometres between.

Cloud forest and montane grassland in the northeast, hardly walked at all.

A mountain range behind Bosaso with cloud forest on top and frankincense on the slopes.

The Cape Floral Kingdom is the smallest and richest of the six on earth, and most of it grows nowhere else.

One of the largest wetlands on earth, where the Nile spreads out and slows almost to a stop.

The Nile turns southwest for three hundred kilometres here, against every expectation.

A collapsed caldera twenty kilometres across with its own permanent population of thirty thousand animals.

Coffee and cocoa country in the southwest, forested and cool, around Kpalime.

The Cap Bon coast, the olive Sahel, and the salt flats of the Chott el Djerid.

Crater lakes around Fort Portal, papyrus swamp on the Nile, and the Rwenzori snowline sitting on the equator.

Escarpment, floodplain and winterthorn forest, with the river braiding through the middle of all of it.

Granite kopjes across the highveld, and the Zambezi escarpment dropping into the valley.

Darija, Tamazight and French, and a coastline that has been argued over for three thousand years.

Semba became samba across the Atlantic, and kuduro went back the other way.

Not a folk survival — a living religion with millions of followers, and a public holiday.

Setswana across the country, and San communities in the Kalahari with the oldest culture on earth.

FESPACO in Ouagadougou every two years, and a film industry that punches far above its size.

The royal drummers of Gishora are on the UNESCO list, and they are not a performance troupe.

A Portuguese-African creole culture, and a music that put these islands on the map.

Bamileke and Bamoun chiefdoms in the west, still functioning, with palaces, secret societies and their own calendars.

Forest hunter-gatherers whose polyphonic singing is on the UNESCO intangible list.

Toubou and Zaghawa in the north, Sara in the south, and Arabic and French across both.

A Swahili island culture, and most of the world's ylang-ylang for perfume.

Rumba was made on both banks of this river, and it is on the UNESCO list because of it.

Akan, Krou, Mandé and Gur — around sixty peoples inside one border.

Two peoples, French and Arabic official, and a port that half the Horn depends on.

Four national languages, and a music that has set the terms for the whole continent.

Three layers still in daily use, sometimes in the same street in old Cairo.

The only Spanish-speaking country in Africa, with Fang on the mainland and Bubi on Bioko.

Tigrinya, Tigre, Afar, Bilen and five more, roughly half Christian and half Muslim.

Umhlanga and Incwala are not performances — they are the constitutional year.

Its own alphabet, its own calendar with thirteen months, and its own church since the fourth century.

An initiatory religion built around iboga, and the ceremonies run all night to harp and drum.

Four main peoples in a country of three million, and a griot tradition across all of them.

A kingdom that fought the British to a standstill, and still keeps its own court at Kumasi.

Bijago women choose husbands, own the houses, and hold the religious authority.

Bembeya Jazz, the Ballets Africains, and a state that funded orchestras for two decades.

Two Kenyas: the cattle-keeping highlands and the coral-stone, Arabic-inflected coast.

The Basotho blanket is worn seriously and read closely, and the mokorotlo is on the flag.

A settler republic founded in 1822 over sixteen indigenous peoples, and the tension of that.

Four peoples and three languages, and a coast that has been Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Ottoman and Italian.

One language across the island, of Austronesian origin, and eighteen distinct peoples speaking it.

The reputation for friendliness is real, and it is the first thing every visitor mentions.

Ali Farka Toure, Toumani Diabate, Salif Keita and Tinariwen are all from here.

Bidhan and Haratin Moors across the north, Fulani, Soninke and Wolof along the river.

Indian, African, French and Chinese, in one Creole language and one calendar.

Three Amazigh languages, Arabic, French and Spanish, and a culture that predates all of them.

Five hundred years of Portuguese on a Swahili coast, and a culture made from both.

Owambo, Herero, Damara, Nama, San and more, and German still on half the street signs.

Tuareg and Toubou in the north, Hausa and Zarma in the south, Wodaabe in between.

Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa and around five hundred more, in one country.

The Intore warriors' dance, the inanga zither, and drumming that was once the property of the king alone.

Forro, Angolar and Principense creoles, and a culture built on the plantations and against them.

The word means hospitality, and it is the thing the country most wants you to notice.

African, French, Indian and Chinese, in one Creole language and one kitchen.

Freetown was founded by freed slaves, and Krio is the language and the culture that came of it.

Somalis are called a nation of poets, and the reputation is deserved and enforced.

Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans and eight more, plus the Cape Malay cooking that came with the slave trade.

Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Bari, Azande, Mundari and fifty-eight more, in a country of twelve million.

Nubian along the northern Nile, Beja in the Red Sea hills, and nearly six hundred groups altogether.

Cattle-keepers on the northern plains, coffee farmers on the mountain, and a coast that has always faced east.

Ewe in the south, Kabye in the centre, Batammariba in the far northwest.

Four layers, all of them still visible, and often in the same town.

Uganda's kingdoms were never abolished for long — Buganda, Bunyoro and Toro still hold court.

Seventy-three ethnic groups, seven official languages, and a royal barge ceremony older than the country.

Shona across the centre and east, Ndebele in the west, and stone sculpture from both.