Shell ovate-conic, solid, ponderous, but little shining, piceous. Spire conic, the apex rather obtuse; suture submarginate. Whorls 8, slightly convex, the upper smooth, white, the succeeding minutely decussate-granulose, fulvous, indistinctly red-flammulate, the last whorl longer than the spire, irregularly rugulose and minutely granulose to the base, blackish-brown, marked with irregular streaks and spots of grayish-yellow. Columella lightly arcuate, narrowly truncate at the base. Aperture sub vertical, acuminate-oval, blue and very glossy inside; the peristome simple, brown-margined, the margins joined by a glossy bluish callous spreading inwards. Length 125, diam. 56, length of aperture 72, width 36 mm.

Dohrn considered this species to be the full-grown stage of A. bandeirana Morelet, an opinion which Morelet opposed, pointing out that while smaller, A. bandeirana has a half whorl more, a vertical columella, the shell has no dark markings, and the base is not granulose, as it is in A. dohrniana. A. welwitschi is much more closely allied to dohrniana.

West Africa: Angola