Atlas Trail
Ten African Capitals from Dakar to Nairobi
This path crosses Africa from the Atlantic coast to the highlands of the east, stopping in ten national capitals. Each one is a different answer to why a capital sits where it does: a peninsula port, a river confluence, a planned midpoint, a hilltop on a lake shore or a high plateau. The order runs roughly west to east, so the changes in site, age and size are easy to follow.
Stop 1 of 10.
Cities
Dakar sits on the Cape Verde Peninsula and is the westernmost major city on the African mainland, which makes it a natural place to begin. It is Senegal's chief port and administrative centre, and its founding year is recorded as 1857. The department of Dakar had 1,278,469 people in 2023.
Stop 2 of 10.
Cities
Algiers lies on the Mediterranean coast and has been known as Algiers the White for its whitewashed buildings. Its recorded founding year of 972 makes it by far the oldest stop on this path. An estimated 4.325 million people lived in the urban area in 2025, which the entry ranks as the largest city on the southern Mediterranean shore.
Stop 3 of 10.
Cities
Accra stands on the Gulf of Guinea coast as the capital and largest city of Ghana. The entry gives a founding year of 1450. The Accra Metropolitan District covers 20.4 square kilometres and held 284,124 people at the 2021 census, but it is only the historic core of the much larger Greater Accra Region.
Stop 4 of 10.
Cities
Abuja is the planned stop: a capital built at the geographic midpoint of Nigeria inside the Federal Capital Territory. It replaced Lagos as the national capital on 12 December 1991. The city itself recorded 1,693,400 residents, and the urban agglomeration was estimated at 3,770,000 in 2022.
Stop 5 of 10.
Cities
Kinshasa lies on the south bank of the Congo River and was formerly named Leopoldville. It is described as one of the world's fastest-growing megacities, with 18,552,800 people recorded for 2021 across 9,965 square kilometres. That is by far the largest population on this path.
Stop 6 of 10.
Cities
Luanda is the capital and largest city of Angola and its primary Atlantic seaport. Its recorded founding year is 1576. The entry notes that it is the most populous Portuguese-speaking national capital in the world, and that its 2024 population of more than 8.8 million is a third of Angola's total.
Stop 7 of 10.
Cities
Khartoum stands at the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile. Together with Omdurman and Khartoum North it forms Greater Khartoum, the largest urban area in Sudan. Its recorded founding year is 1821, and the infobox gives 1,974,647 people as a 2025 estimate.
Stop 8 of 10.
Cities
Addis Ababa is the highest capital in Africa, at an elevation of 2,355 metres, and the fourth highest in the world. It was founded in 1886 and had an estimated 6,287,000 inhabitants in 2025, making it the tenth largest city in Africa. It serves as a major diplomatic, cultural and financial hub for the continent.
Stop 9 of 10.
Cities
Kampala is built across a series of hills near the shore of Lake Victoria, at an elevation of 1,200 metres. The city proper had 1,797,722 people in the 2024 census and is divided into five political divisions: Kampala Central, Kawempe, Makindye, Nakawa and Rubaga.
Stop 10 of 10.
Cities
Nairobi closes the path as East Africa's leading commercial and diplomatic hub and one of the continent's largest metropolitan areas. Its recorded founding year of 1899 is the most recent on this path. The 2019 census counted 4,397,073 people in 696.1 square kilometres.
Create an account to keep this trail. Saving copies its stops into a collection of your own, which you can add to, reorder and share.
Where you have got to in this trail is kept by your own browser and is never sent to us. Clearing your browser data clears it. All trails.