Destination
Mauritania
Two World Heritage sites and nine elements on the intangible lists, from the caravan towns of the Sahara to an Atlantic coast of dunes and migrating birds.
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Every guide and article for one part of the continent, gathered on a single page.
Country guides
Entry rules, safety, money, getting around, culture and the best time to go, country by country.
Destination
Guinea-Bissau
The only World Heritage site in Guinea-Bissau was inscribed in 2025: the coastal and marine ecosystems of the Bijagos Archipelago.
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Burundi
Burundi holds no World Heritage site, ten nominations still waiting, and one inscribed tradition: the ritual dance of the royal drum.
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Comoros
Six medina towns inscribed as one property, organized by matrilineal and matrilocal custom alongside patrilineal Islamic tradition.
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Eritrea
A modernist city built as a colonial capital, inscribed together with the unplanned neighborhoods the planners did not design.
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Djibouti
No World Heritage site, ten nominations filed in 2015 and still waiting, and a system of oral customary law that is inscribed.
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Algeria
Seven World Heritage sites, more than any other country in this build: Roman towns, a medieval fortified city, the Kasbah of Algiers and Saharan rock art.
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Guinea
One World Heritage site, shared with a neighbor, holding a toad that bears live young and chimpanzees that use stones as tools.
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Côte d'Ivoire
Five World Heritage sites, a first capital planned with separate quarters for Europeans and for Africans, and the inscribed skills behind attieke.
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Liberia
Nothing on the World Heritage List, and three nominations of which two are extensions of properties the neighboring countries already hold.
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Sierra Leone
A rainforest inscribed in 2025 holding pygmy hippopotamus and the endangered white-necked rockfowl, in the Upper Guinean biodiversity hotspot.
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The Gambia
An island documenting both the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade and its abolition, and a thousand stone circles shared with Senegal.
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São Tomé and Príncipe
Six plantations inscribed together as a colonial system built on forced labor to keep cocoa and coffee flowing after slavery was abolished.
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Equatorial Guinea
No World Heritage site and no intangible heritage element, and six nominations filed in a single year after decades of filing none.
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Angola
Mbanza Kongo, capital of one of the largest states in the region for five centuries, and a way of drawing in sand that schools now teach as mathematics.
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Republic of the Congo
A forest massif holding the richest primate diversity in Central Africa, and a share of a park that runs across two international borders.
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Gabon
Eighteen hundred rock carvings along a Bantu migration route, in a landscape where dense rainforest and relict savanna meet and neither wins.
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Cameroon
Three World Heritage sites in Cameroon: a rainforest reserve, a share of a park spanning three countries, and a dry-stone landscape with unknown builders.
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Zimbabwe
Five World Heritage sites, including the Shona capital a legend once credited to the Queen of Sheba, and half of a waterfall Zambia shares.
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Eswatini
No World Heritage site at all, one nomination pending since 2008, and the earliest known mining anywhere: ochre cut 42,000 years ago.
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Lesotho
One transnational property, the largest concentration of San rock paintings anywhere south of the Sahara, and a fish found in a single park.
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Mozambique
A fortified Portuguese trading post on the route to India, a wetland park shared with South Africa, and the music and masked dance of south and north.
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Togo
Koutammakou, the mud tower-houses of the Batammariba, is the only World Heritage site in Togo and it continues into Benin.
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Benin
The palaces of twelve Abomey kings, a savannah holding the only viable lion population in West Africa, and a masked society governed by women.
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Senegal
Goree, which UNESCO calls both a reminder of human exploitation and a sanctuary for reconciliation, and a thousand stone circles along the Gambia.
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Seychelles
Aldabra, where a herbivore sits at the top of the food chain, and a palm forest on Praslin holding the largest seed in the plant kingdom.
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Nigeria
The Osun sacred grove and the terraced hill settlement at Sukur: two World Heritage sites in Nigeria, one in the south west and one on the Cameroon border.
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Ethiopia
The walled city of Harar and the Gedeo agroforestry landscape: two of Ethiopia's twelve World Heritage inscriptions, beyond the two everyone already knows.
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Cape Verde
Cidade Velha was the first European town built in the tropics and a platform for the Atlantic trade in enslaved people. Creole culture began there.
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Tunisia
Carthage, the free-standing amphitheater at El Jem, and a whole island inscribed for the way people settled it: ten sites on a coast sold as a beach.
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Morocco
Fez after ten centuries of building, the earthen ksar at Ait Ben Haddou, and a country whose entire World Heritage record is architecture.
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Malawi
Lake Malawi’s endemic cichlids, the rock art at Chongoni, and the sacred inselberg of Mulanje: a small country that rewards the unhurried.
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Madagascar
The sacred hill at Ambohimanga, the limestone tsingy of the western dry forests, and an island whose story is human as well as natural.
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Mauritius
Le Morne, where escaped slaves sheltered, and Aapravasi Ghat, where indenture began: an island carrying far more history than beach.
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Uganda
Mountain gorillas in Bwindi, the royal tombs at Kasubi, and forests that climb from the plains toward the snowline of the Rwenzori range.
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Rwanda
Nyungwe’s rainforest, primates at altitude, and four genocide memorial sites now on the World Heritage List: Rwanda asks to be understood, not only visited.
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Tanzania
Kilimanjaro, the medieval trading ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani, and seven World Heritage sites across a country of mountain, plain and coast.
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Namibia
The world’s only coastal fog desert, rock engravings at /Ui-//aes, and a colonial history the country is still publicly reckoning with.
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Botswana
An inland delta that floods in the dry season, 4,500 rock paintings at Tsodilo, and a deliberate choice to keep tourism small and costly.
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Zambia
Mosi-oa-Tunya, walking safaris in the Luangwa, and a copper economy that built the cities: Zambia rewards travelers who slow down.
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Ghana
The Gold Coast forts, Ashanti goldworking, highlife and the Year of Return: Ghana holds a particular place in diaspora travel.
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South Africa
The Cape, the Drakensberg, Kruger, and a country still working through the history the traveler will encounter everywhere.
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Egypt
Pharaonic monuments, Coptic and Islamic Cairo, the Nile as a working river, and a Nubian south with its own history.
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Kenya
The Rift Valley, the Mara migration, Swahili coastal cities, and a conservation model that has been argued over for fifty years.