Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is the part of Africa south of the Sahara, comprising countries whose territories lie wholly or partly south of the desert.
Sahara: The world’s largest hot desert, stretching across North Africa between the Mediterranean and the Sahel. The desert supplies the geographic boundary named by this regional label.
Congo Basin: The vast drainage basin of the Congo River, containing the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest. Its rainforest and river systems exemplify Central Africa’s ecological scale.
Bantu expansion: The long spread of Bantu-speaking peoples and languages across much of central, eastern, and southern Africa. It reshaped the region’s linguistic and demographic landscapes over millennia.
Scramble for Africa: The rapid European conquest and partition of most of Africa during the late nineteenth century. Its partition produced borders that cut across existing political and social landscapes.
North Africa: The African region bordering the Mediterranean and centered on the Sahara’s northern side. It is the neighboring macroregion most often contrasted with Sub-Saharan Africa.
Sahel: A semiarid belt south of the Sahara, spanning Africa from the Atlantic toward the Red Sea. This transition zone links the desert’s southern edge with drier savannas.
Great Rift Valley: A system of geological rifts extending through eastern Africa, formed as the African Plate pulls apart. Its lakes, escarpments, and volcanoes shape landscapes across the east.
Kingdom of Aksum: An ancient kingdom centered in present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea, prominent from the first to seventh centuries CE. Aksum connected the Horn of Africa to Red Sea and Indian Ocean commerce.
Berlin Conference: The 1884–1885 meeting at which European powers negotiated rules for their claims in Africa. It formalized imperial competition without African representation.
Africa: The world’s second-largest continent, extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Cape of Good Hope. Sub-Saharan Africa is a regional division of the continent, not a separate continent.