Imagine it is 1955 and some African students are studying their continent’s history at a high school on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. They are using a textbook written by English authors, and it states that a German missionary and explorer named Rebmann discovered Mount Kilimanjaro in 1848. But the students know from the traditions of their people that their ancestors lived on that mountain’s fertile slopes and appreciated its beauty centuries before Rebmann arrived. To these students, Africa is not a continent Europeans discovered and explored, but an ancient land rich in tradition, history, and promise for the future.
As you read about Africa, you may be surprised to learn how varied it is and how many different people live there. If you thought of Africa as a vast desert or a land of deep forests, you will learn that Africa has both, but it also has high mountains, beautiful beaches, enormous lakes, and rolling grasslands. Besides small villages, Africa also has large, modern cities. There, people from the countryside mingle with doctors, lawyers, teachers, secretaries, business people, government officials, and factory workers. It is in the cities that people are being given the education and skills to move African nations from their status of recently independent to twenty-first century nations.
THE VASTNESS OF AFRICA
Africa is the second largest continent in the world, occupying about one fifth of the world’s land area. Only Asia is larger. The distance across Africa at its widest point is equal to the distance between New York City and Moscow. The distance north to south is about the same. Historically, Africa’s population has not been large. However, it is growing quickly. Its 1.1 billion people make up about 15% of the world’s population.
The African Plateau
People used to think that Africa had no contact with Europe or Asia until the last 500 years, but historians now know better. Seafarers from Southeast Asia crossed miles of ocean to mix with East Africans 2,000 years ago. Arabs crossed the Sahara desert to West Africa, or sailed down the East African coast, beginning around 600 CE. There were event contacts between Africans and Chinese before the time of Columbus. Africa’s geography made such contact difficult, however. The vast Sahara cut off two thirds of Africa from easy contact with North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Oceans separated the continent from Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Because it has relatively unbroken coastline, Africa has few natural harbors that would provide anchorage for curious seafarers. As if this were not enough to discourage would-be explorers, Africa has an extremely narrow coastal plain, averaging only 20 miles wide. Africa’s rivers tend to have falls or rapids where they drop down from the interior plateau on their way to the sea. These rapids were yet another major obstacle to the exploration of the interior.
The elevation of Africa is higher than that of the other continents. On average, the Earth’s landmasses do not rise far above the level of the sea. Whereas only about half of Europe is 500 feet or more above sea level, nearly 90 percent of Africa is that high. In the eastern half of the continent the average elevation of the plateau is 5,000 to 6,000 feet. The plateau does not level off gradually to sea level, but drops off sharply. As one moves westward, however, the high elevation declines more gradually to sea level.
The Importance of River Basins
Africa’s plateau is not a smooth expanse, but is broken by occasional mountains and by five large river basins. The largest of these, the Congo Basin, is located in the very heart of Africa. Far to the south of the Congo Basin lies the Kalahari Basin. To the north of the Zaire Basin, running from east to west and spanning the entire continent, are the Nile, the Chad, and the Niger River basins.
Geographically, Africa looks inward, rather than toward the sea. The major basins are much like enormous inland seas. Indeed, at one time, these basins contained huge inland lakes. Lake Tumba in the center of the Congo Basin is all that remains of what was once an enormous expanse of water.
The history of Africa, in many respects, is the story of the rise, spread, and fall of civilizations along the river systems that drain or bypass these enormous basins. It is also the story of the attempts of people from other continents to dominate the African plateau.
The Congo Basin lies across the equator. In contrast to most of Africa, it is hot and moist and heavily forested. The Congo River and its major tributaries, the Ubangi and the Kasai, drain this enormous basin, gathering its waters and channeling them over the falls at Kinshasa. Below the falls, the Congo cuts through hills to the Atlantic. Ships coming from the Atlantic can navigate the Congo, the world’s fifth longest river, only to Matadi, less than 100 miles from the sea. But from Kinshasa, capital of the D.R. Congo, river boats can travel nearly 1,100 miles to Kisangani. The Congo River system is the most extensive and useful in Africa, covering approximately 8,000 miles of navigable waterways.
Two of the continent’s other major basins-the Kalahari in the south and the Chad in the north-are not connected by rivers to the sea. The Kalahari Basin is little more than a huge desert, the home of the San hunters and gatherers. The Chad Basin is also isolated, since it lies in the southern part of the desolate Sahara. At the center of this depression is Lake Chad, once an enormous body of water, but now only a shallow and swampy lake, fed by several rivers. Although Lake Chad is navigable, its waters are so choked with weeds that travel is difficult, particularly during the dry season when the water level is low.
Two of the World’s Longest Rivers
The Nile and Niger Rivers, as well as the Congo, drain their huge basin and provide outlets to the sea. The Nile’s 4,150 miles make it the world’s longest river, but more important, the Nile has been a link between the Mediterranean world and the interior of Africa for centuries. However, the river’s six cataracts, or stretches of rapids, along with the Sahara made communication between African and Mediterranean civilizations difficult.
The Nile has two branches. One, the White Nile, flows northward from the great lakes of East Africa, at times nearly choked with vegetation. The other branch, called the Blue Nile, winds its course from Lake Tana in the mountains of Ethiopia to meet the White Nile at Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.
Because the Nile Basin includes part of the arid western region of the Sahara, it has a small population. The Niger River, at its source on the border of Sierra Leone, is less than 200 miles from the Atlantic. But before the waters of the Niger reach the sea they flow northeastward into the arid basin. Then, near Timbuktu, the Niger bends southward, flowing through the Nigeria and finally into the Atlantic, a total distance of 2,600 miles, nearly 300 miles longer than the Mississippi.
The Great Rift Valley
Along a line running from the Red Sea in the north to South Africa, the great African plateau is split by an enormous rift, or crack in the Earth’s surface, formed thousands of years ago. This rift extends a distance equivalent to about one eighth of the circumference of the Earth. Portions of this narrow but deep depression have filled with water, and are today some of the world’s largest and deepest lakes.
The widest section in this fracture of the Earth’s surface is the Red Sea, which separates the Arabian Peninsula from Africa. The rift then runs southward through Lake Tana in Ethiopia and into Lake Turkana on the border of Kenya. There the rift divides into a western section that includes lakes Albert and Edward, separating Uganda from DR Congo. The western rift continues southward through Lake Kivu into Lake Tanganyika, which forms the boundary between Tanzania, DR Congo, and Zambia. How far the Earth’s surface must have fallen to create this rift is revealed by the fact that at its deepest point Lake Tanganyika is more than 2,000 feet below sea level. The eastern rift runs through central Kenya and Tanzania. A number of smaller lakes mark its course southward. The two sections of the rift seem to rejoin at the northern end of Lake Malawi, which forms the boundary between Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, and Tanzania.
Some geologists think that Lake Victoria-next to Lake Superior, the world’s largest freshwater lake-may also be a product of the enormous rift system. The three great African lakes-Victoria, Tanganyika, and Malawi, are among the world’s ten largest bodies of fresh water, and play an important part in the life of the peoples of East Africa.
The Sahara as a Dividing Line
In Arabic the word sahara means desert, and the Sahara is the world’s largest desert. It occupies more than 3.5 million square miles, an area larger than the United States. It extends from the Red Sea in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, and at its widest point extends a greater distance than from New York to San Francisco. As huge as it is, the Sahara contains only about 5 million people. Contrary to popular belief, the Sahara has large rocky areas and mountains, as well as vast, rolling stretches of sand.
Until about 10,000 years ago, the Sahara was a grassland region. Then a climate change deprived the region of moisture, transforming it into its present dry state. Had the Sahara not become a desert, but remained a well-watered and fertile region, Africa might have developed differently. As it was, the Sahara was long an obstacle to north-south travel and the exchange of goods and ideas between the interior of Africa and the Mediterranean coastal areas.
In about the fourth century CE, the camel was introduced from the Arabian Peninsula as a desert carrier. Soon camel caravels linked northern Africa with the interior, and as a result, a lively trade developed in West Africa. Gold from the region south of the desert was exchanged for salt from the north.
Like Africa’s other deserts, the Sahara is growing in size. Overgrazing by animals and long spells of drought have speeded up the process of desertification.
The West African Coast
One other geographical region of Africa needs to be described here. The plateau region of West Africa is neither as high as it is in East Africa nor does it rise as sharply from the sea. In fact, along the expanse of the curve of West Africa, the land often slopes gradually to the sea. This low-lying tropical region of the so called Guinea Coast receives adequate rainfall and supports large populations.
It is from this region of West Africa and its extension south across the equator that European and American slave traders obtained the Africans that they shipped to the Americas. The ancestors of most of the Western Hemisphere’s black population once lived in this area of Africa.
Questions
- What African geographical features make contact difficult, and why?
- How might Africa have developed differently if the Sahara did not become a desert?