GEOGRAPHY
Physical Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa
*Africa is the world’s 2nd largest continent, covering about 11,677,240
square miles. Sub-Saharan Africa makes up most of that area,
totalling over 9.5 million square miles.
*The region is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the west and the Indian
Ocean on the east, and the dividing point between them is the Cape of
Good Hope in South Africa.
*The northern boundary of Sub-Saharan Africa, of course, is the Sahara
Desert (a redundant name, as Sahara is just the English transliteration
of the Arabic word for ‘desert’). The Sahara is the largest
desert in the world, covering over 3.5 million square miles—the entire
USA would fit inside it.
*Just south of the Sahara is the Sahel, an area of tropical savannah
and steppe that is slowly suffering from desertification as the Sahara
moves southwards—either due to unstoppable climate change (hotter
weather with more and longer dry periods) or to human deforestation and
over-grazing by livestock (or some combination of both). This
desertification has been particularly noticeable the past 50 years.
*There are several other deserts in Africa, notably the Namib Desert
(on the Namibian coast) and the Kalahari Desert (in the interior of
southern Africa).
*There are a number of mountain ranges and highland areas in
Sub-Saharan Africa.
*The Ruwenzori Mountains separate Uganda from the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, and are the only mountain range in Africa to have
snow-covered peaks year-round (although two other isolate peaks have
snow all year as well). Because their peaks were always
snow-covered, the local people called them ‘the Mountains of the
Moon.’ Because of their height, and their location in the
equatorial regions, almost every climate type, from tropical rainforest
to snow-caps can be found on them.
*The Drakensberg (Dragon Mountains) are found in South Africa and
Lesotho.
*In addition to these ranges, there are several volcanic peaks that
stand alone, apart from any major range. These include the two
tallest mountains in Africa.
*The highest mountain in Africa is Mount Kilimanjaro, in
Tanzania. It stands 19,340 feet high (and like some mountains in
the Ruwenzori Range, it always has snow on it).
*Mount Kenya is the highest mountain in Kenya, and the 2nd highest in
Africa. It stands 17,057 feet high, and also has snow all year.
*The Horn of Africa is the area in Eastern Africa that includes Somalia
and Eritrea. It also has a major highland regions of hills, low
mountains, and plateaux. This region is known as the Ethiopian
Highlands.
*The Ethiopian Highlands are cut by the Great Rift Valley. This
is a vast valley running from Ethiopia to Mozambique that has been
created by the spreading of tectonic plates underneath Africa.
Mount Kilimanjaro is found along its edge, and many of Africa’s largest
lakes are found in its basin. One day (thousands of years hence)
it will probably form an inlet of the Indian Ocean into the heart of
Africa.
*The longest river in Africa is the Nile. It comes from two main
tributaries, the Blue Nile arising in the Ethiopian Highlands, and the
White Nile, ultimately flowing from Lake Victoria, the largest lake in
Africa.
*The Congo River is the second longest river in Africa, and the
second-largest river in terms of water flow in the world (behind the
Amazon). It also has the second largest watershed (or river
basin) of any river in the world, behind the Amazon and just ahead of
the Mississippi-Missouri system.
*The third largest river in Africa is the Niger River, and the most
fertile areas of Africa are those drained by these three rivers.
*Other major rivers include the Orange, the Zambezi, and the Limpopo in
southern Africa. The Orange River in particularly was important
in the history of South Africa as the Boers (Afrikaaner farmers)
settled around it or retreated beyond it to escape rule by the British.
*Africa has many large lakes, including one of the largest man-made
lakes in the world: Lake Volta, created by damming the Volta
River in the 1960s. Today it generates most of the power used by
Ghana, and provides fishing and water for irrigation.
*Lake Victoria, source of the Nile, is the largest lake in Africa and
the second-largest fresh-water lake in the world, covering 26,590
square miles (although it is very shallow).
*The second-largest lake in Africa, and the second-deepest fresh-water
lake in the world is Lake Tanganyika. It is thought that it was
once part of the ocean, as it contains marine life such as jellyfish,
crabs, and shrimp that have adapted to freshwater existence.
*Lake Chad is shrinking. Although it is fed by three rivers,
droughts in northern Sub-Saharan Africa were been so bad in the 1970s
that Lake Chad began to dry up and has not yet reversed the trend—parts
of it are dry during the summer.
*Look at pages 506 and 507 in the textbook.
*Almost all of Sub-Saharan Africa is within the tropics—only parts of
South Africa are not. Consequently much of the region
is covered in tropical rain forest, particularly in the Congo
Basin.
*Tropical Savannah is also common: the most famous example of
this is the Serengeti Plain in eastern Africa, much of which is now
protected (at least in theory) as a Tanzanian National Park.
*There are some steppe regions in Africa (the Sahel is a mixture of
steppe and savannah—both grassland climates). Besides the Sahel,
there are also steppes in southern Africa around the Kalihari.
*South Africa is mostly south of the Tropic of Capricorn, and it has
some sub-tropical climates: the eastern coast has Marine West
Coast and Humid Sub-Tropical climates, while there is a small area of
Mediterranean climate around Cape Town.
*Geologically, Africa ought to be one of the richest regions in the
world: it has most of the world’s gold reserves (half of the
world’s gold is in South Africa alone), and rich deposits of uranium,
cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, zinc, and diamonds.
*Africa also has tremendous reserves of water (at least in some
regions), with the potential to have more useful hydroelectric power
stations than the entire United States. However, both the
hydrological and the mineral wealth of the region have either been
largely undeveloped or have seen most of their wealth go into the hands
of a privileged few.