Which African national park is the second largest?

Kafue National Park is the second-largest national park in Africa. Covering about 22,400 square kilometres, it is also Zambia’s largest national park and is roughly comparable in area to Wales or Massachusetts.

The park was created during the 1950s and takes its name from the Kafue River, which flows through Zambia. Its huge territory stretches across Zambia’s North-Western, Central, and Southern provinces. The landscape includes woodland, dambos, floodplains, wetlands, and the wildlife-rich Busanga Plains, which are especially important during the seasonal floods.

Kafue supports an exceptional range of wildlife. Recorded species include 152 mammals, 515 birds, 70 reptiles, 58 fish species, and 36 amphibians. Large herbivores and predators share the park with unusual wetland species adapted to its changing water levels.

The main quiz trap is confusing national-park size with the size of a wider conservation complex or protected landscape. Rankings can vary when different boundaries are counted, but Kafue is the standard answer in references that rank Africa’s individual national parks by area.