Chess in Africa - FIDE Members

Working on another project, unrelated to chess, I had to increase my knowledge of African geography. What better way to do that than by relating it to chess? Using my post on Crash Course in Soviet Geography as an example, I constructed the following map and table. I'll connect this introduction to populations and rating data in a future post.

Starting with Egypt, the table moves counterclockwise around the coast of Africa, with short detours for the islands. After reaching Sudan, it lists the landlocked countries left-to-right, top-to-bottom starting with Mali.

Country	Fed	05	09
Egypt	EGY	*	*
Libya	LBA	*	*
Tunisia	TUN	*	*
Algeria	ALG	*	*
Morocco	MAR	*	*
Western Sahara
Mauritania	MTN	*
Cape Verde
Senegal	SEN	*
Gambia	GAM	*
Guinea-Bissau
Guinea
Sierra Leone			*
Liberia
Cote d'Ivoire (i.e.Ivory Coast)	CIV	*
Ghana	GHA	*	*
Togo	TOG	*
Benin	BEN	*
Nigeria	NGR	*	*
Cameroon	CAM	*	*
Equitorial Guinea
Sao Tome and Principe	STP	*	*
Gabon			*
Congo (Republic of the)
Congo (Democratic Republic of the)			*
Angola	ANG	*	*
Namibia	NAM	*	*
South Africa	RSA	*	*
Mozambique	MOZ	*	*
Madagascar	MAD	*	*
Seychelles	SEY	*	*
Comoros
Mauritius	MRI	*	*
Tanzania	TAN	*
Kenya	KEN	*	*
Somalia	SOM	*	*
Djibouti	DJI	*
Eritrea
Sudan	SUD	*	*
Mali	MLI	*
Burkina Faso
Niger
Chad	CHD	*
Central African Republic
Ethiopia	ETH	*	*
Uganda	UGA	*	*
Rwanda	RWA	*	*
Burundi	BUR	*	*
Zambia	ZAM	*	*
Malawi	MAW	*	*
Zimbabwe	ZIM	*	*
Botswana	BOT	*	*
Swaziland
Lesotho

The columns titled 'Fed'/'05' are a list of FIDE federation codes from an About.com article I wrote in June 2005: Introduction to World Chess Federation (FIDE) Zones (link to Archive.org). I presume that the countries were FIDE members at that time.

The column titled '09' is a current (2009) list of member federations on the FIDE page for Africa. Ten countries listed as FIDE members in 2005 are no longer members in 2009, while three countries have become FIDE members since 2005. I assume that FIDE's 'Congo' is the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Credits:

• Full map: Africa (Political) 2007
• More maps: Africa Maps (Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)