Does Black Panther hail the Sudan-Ethiopia border?
But comic book fans love universe-building, so the Black Panther's exploits over the years have revealed much more about the geography of Wakanda, from its central "vibranium mound" to its border with rival Azania (a thinly veiled version of apartheid-era South Africa). A Marvel Atlas series published in 2008 located Wakanda on the northern end of Lake Turkana, in what would be southwestern Ethiopia for us. A SHIELD map in the Captain America: Civil War movie shows the same location. In our world, this is a searing desert populated only by nomads, not Black Panther's lush paradise—unless the Wakandans are keeping a very, very low profile.
Our world's Wakandans discovered iron, not vibranium.
The current Black Panther comic, written by no less than National Book Award-winning author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, has its own map. Coates places Wakanda on the western shore of Lake Victoria, surrounded by the fictional rival states of Mohannda, Canaan, Niganda, and good ol' problematic Azania. In our world, this is the Ugandan-Tanzanian border, so the lakeside city of Bukoba, Tanzania is our real-life analogue to the Wakandan capital of Birnin Zana, the "Golden City." Bukoba is not a gleaming techno-metropolis, but it does offer a small museum of local tribal items, as well as tours of nearby ancient cave paintings and the 2,500 year-old furnace of Katuruka. Katuruka is the oldest iron-smelting furnace in southern Africa, and was centuries ahead of European metallurgy in its time.
