African Continent

Africa is the second largest continent in terms of size, covering about one-fifth of the land area of the earth. Spread over 30,330,000 sq km, Africa is located between 35° 5 and 37° N latitudes and 50° E and 17° W longitudes. The African continent is separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea and from Asia by the Red Sea. The Strait of Gibralter in the north-west, the Suez Canal in the north­east and the Strait of Bab-el Mandeb connect Africa to Eurasia.

Africa is an enormous plateau,. most of which is covered by deserts, forests and grasslands. The continent can be divided into two major land regions-Low Africa and High Africa. Low Africa, consisting of northern, west­ern and central Africa, is further subdivided into the Coastal Lowlands, the Northern Highlands, the Saharan Plateau, the Western Plateau, the Nile Basin and the Congo (Zaire) Basin. High Africa covers eastern and southern Africa and may be further subdivided into the Rift System, the Eastern Highlands, the Southern Plateau, the Coastal Lowlands and Madagascar. The Rift System, a spetial physical feature of Africa, consists of the Great Rift Valley, which is a series of parallel cracks in the earth that form deep, steep-sided valleys. Many of these valleys house lakes. There are several large lakes in High Africa. Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa and is the source of River Nile, the longest river in the world. Other large rift lakes include the Tanganyika, Nyasa, Albert and Turkana. The Rift System extends from Ethiopia in the east to Mozambique in the south-east. It is rich in volcanic soil and has some of Africa's best farmlands.

Deserts cover about two-fifths of Africa. The Sahara, the world's largest desert, stretches across northern Africa from the Atlantic Sea to the Red Sea. Other deserts include the Namib desert and the Kalahari desert in southern Africa. Grasslands cover more than two-fifths of Africa. Forests cover less than a fifth of the continent.
Other major African rivers include the Congo (Zaire)­which carries the greatest volume of water among all the rivers of Africa-and the Niger, which discharge into the Atlantic, and the Limpopo and the Zambezi which drain into the Indian Ocean. The Nile flows northward from east­central Africa to the Mediterranean Sea.
Most of Africa's highest mountains have been created by volcanic activity. Mt Kilimanjaro (5895 m) in Tanzania and Mt Kenye (5199) in Kenya are extinct volcanoes. The Atlas mountain range, extending from Morocco to Tunisia, forms Africa's longest mountain chain and is of non­volcanic nature.
About 90 per cent of the African continent lies within the tropics-Africa has the largest tropical area in the world.