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24
Geography
7. THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT OF AFRICA
7.1. The relief and waters
Africa is one of the oldest continents and so it has only one real mountain range, the
Atlas Mountains
, in the extreme northwest. In the southeast, there is the
Drakensberg
mountain range. In the east of Africa, there is a large fracture in the Earth’s crust, the
Rift
Valley
. With time, this area of the continent will break off. In this great system of fractures
there are sunken areas or rift valleys
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and the lakes of
Tanganyika
and
Malawi
. There
are numerous volcanoes, such as
Kilimanjaro
at 5892 m and Mount Kenya at 5199 m.
The great African rivers are the
Nile
(the source is Lake Victoria and it flows into the
Mediterranean Sea), the
Congo
(the second most voluminous river in the world), the
Niger
(both flow into the Atlantic Ocean) and the
Zambezi
(with the famous Victoria
Falls) that flows into the Indian Ocean. The other important lakes are
Lake Victoria
(the
third largest in the world) and
Lake Chad
situated on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Lake
Chad is drying out because of the agricultural and urban use of the rivers that flow into it,
which may cause a huge ecological disaster.
Africa is a very compact continent, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and
the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea to the east. In the north, the Mediterranean Sea
separates it from Europe. It has a large island,
Madagascar
, in the Indian Ocean and
the archipelagos of the
Canary Islands
and
Cape Verde
in the Atlantic Ocean.
Madeira
Islands
Canary
Islands
Cape Verde
Islands
St. Helena
Seychelles
Comores
Madagascar Mauritius
Réunión
Suez
Isthmus
Mozambique Channel
Cape Agujas
Cabo Blanco
Victoria
Falls
Lake Turkana
Lake
Victoria
Lake
Tanganika
Lake
Malawi
Lake Chad
R
I
F
T
V
A
L
L
E
Y
Niger
River Basin
Katanga
Plateau
Bié
Plateau
Darfur
Plateau
Chad
Basin
Congo
Basin
Ubangi
Plateau
Mt Stanley
5 109
Mt Kenia
5 199
Kilimanjaro
5 892
Mt Cameroon
4 040
Toubkal
4 165
Greenwich meridian
trópico de Capricornio
Equator
Tropic of Cancer
S A H A R A
Desierto
de Kalahari
Namib
Desert
Ethiopian
Massif
D
r
a
k
e
n
s
b
e
r
g
M
t
s
A
T
L
A
S
Ahaggar
Massif
Tibesti
Massif
Cyrenaic
Pen.
Somalia
Pen.
Zambeze
Níger
Gambia
Senegal
Nile
Congo
AT L A N T I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
Gulf
of Gabès
Gulf of Aden
Gulf
of Guinea
Red Sea
Mediterranean Sea
Libia
Desert
Nubia
Desert
Aïr
Massif
Cape of
Good Hope
Orange
Height (m)
4000
2000-4000
1000-2000
500-1000
200-500
0-200
1 500 km
0
1:69 728 000
N
40º S
20º S
20º N
20º O
0º
20º E
40º E
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rift valley:
sunken part in between two
elevated parts, originated by a fracture in
the earth’s crust
Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park
(Uganda)
Tenere Desert (Algiers)
Rivers and lakes
Length/
surface area
Nile
6756 km
Congo
4700 km
Niger
4180 km
Zambezi
2574 km
Lake Victoria
69482 km
2
Lake Tanganyika
32900 km
2
Lake Malawi
29600 km
2
