Ten underrated cities across Africa, from Lalibela's rock-cut churches to the Asante court in Kumasi, ranked by how much more they give than their visitor numbers suggest.
Most Africa trips run Marrakech, Cairo, Cape Town, Zanzibar and the safari parks. These ten sit just off that circuit. We ranked them by the gap between how good the place is and how few visitors it gets, the same basis as our global hidden gems list.
Eleven churches cut downward into solid rock in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, on the UNESCO list since 1978. None is a museum: priests serve in all of them, and one ticket covers the lot.
A 1930s Italian new town at 2,325 metres where almost nothing has been knocked down, listed whole by UNESCO in 2017. Walk the Fiat Tagliero and Cinema Impero, then join the evening passeggiata. Travel beyond 25 km needs a permit.
The walled Jugol packs 82 mosques and 102 shrines into about a square kilometre of lanes. Stay out after dark, when the hyenas come to the gates to be fed.
A city on a limestone plateau that the Rhumel has split with a 175-metre gorge, crossed by the Sidi M'Cid suspension bridge. It was Cirta, capital of Numidia, long before Rome renamed it.
A palm oasis near the Libyan border where the everyday language is Siwi, not Arabic. Alexander the Great consulted the Oracle of Amun here in 331 BC; give it three nights for the salt pools and the Great Sand Sea.
Ethiopia's capital from 1636, with six emperors' castles inside one wall at Fasil Ghebbi, on the UNESCO list since 1979. Do not miss the angel-faced ceiling of Debre Berhan Selassie.
The old capital of French West Africa, a UNESCO-listed island of balconied houses where the Senegal River meets the Atlantic. Base here for the Langue de Barbarie by pirogue and Djoudj's birds from November to April.
Cape Verde's music town, a Creole port around a flooded volcanic crater where Cesária Évora first sang. Spend the nights in the morna bars and one day on the ferry to Santo Antão; February brings carnival.
Most visitors never leave the beach hotels, which is the point. Inland the island holds El Ghriba, held to be Africa's oldest synagogue, the potters of Guellala and a settlement pattern UNESCO listed in 2023.
The Asante capital since the 1680s, where the king still sits at Manhyia and Kejetia runs to more than 8,000 stalls. Kente weavers at Bonwire and adinkra printers at Ntonso are within easy reach.
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