North Africa is separated from Subsaharan Africa by the African Transition Zone, a transitional area between Islamic-dominated North Africa and animist- and Christian-dominated Subsaharan Africa. It is also a transition between the Sahara Desert and the tropical type A climates of Africa’s equatorial region.
What physical feature separates northern and sub Saharan Africa?
The Sahel is a narrow band of semi-arid land that forms a transition zone between the Sahara to the north and the savannas to the south. It is made up of flat, barren plains that stretch roughly 5,400 kilometers (3,300 miles) across Africa, from Senegal to Sudan.
How is North Africa different from Sub Saharan Africa?
For some, the dividing line is more than the Sahara – it is culture, language and even skin tone. North Africa is predominantly Arab and relatively more developed. … But when it comes to an African identity, some sub-Saharan Africans believe they have more claim to the continent than their northern counterparts.
Why is sub Saharan Africa separated from North Africa?
Since probably 3500 BCE, the Saharan and sub-Saharan regions of Africa have been separated by the extremely harsh climate of the sparsely populated Sahara, forming an effective barrier interrupted by only the Nile in Sudan, though the Nile was blocked by the river’s cataracts.
What divides the Sahara and the rest of Africa?
What Region is this? THE SAHEL Page 47 The Sahara divides Africa into two regions.
What are the characteristics of sub Saharan Africa?
In addition to an array of landforms from rift valleys to mountains to deserts, Sub-Saharan Africa contains a wide variety of climate zones and precipitation patterns. In general, the continent is relatively hot with temperate climates in the higher elevations.
Why is it called Sub Saharan Africa?
Arab writers referred to the region south of the Sahara as bilad al-sudan, or “land of the blacks”. The term was used to describe a larger area than modern-day Sudan, stretching roughly from Senegal to Ethiopia. Some 18th-century British mapmakers simply translated it as “Negroland”.
Is Egypt an Arab or African country?
Although Egypt sits in the north of the African continent it is considered by many to be a Middle Eastern country, partly because the main spoken language there is Egyptian Arabic, the main religion is Islam and it is a member of the Arab League.
Is North Africa considered African?
North Africa or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in the west, to Egypt’s Suez Canal and the Red Sea in the east.
Can Sub Saharan Africa feed itself?
More specifically, although sub-Saharan Africa’s current self-sufficiency ratio in staple cereals is just above 0.8 (Fig. 1A), it is among the (sub)continents with the lowest cereal self-sufficiency ratio while it has the greatest projected increase in population (14, 15).
Is Sub-Saharan Africa poor?
Half of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have poverty rates higher than 35%. These numbers become even more alarming when compared with the levels of extreme poverty in other regions. Of the top 20 economies with poverty rate estimates in PovcalNet, 18 are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
How many countries does Africa have?
How many countries are there in Africa? 48 countries share the area of mainland Africa, plus six island nations are considered to be part of the continent. All in all, there are 54 sovereign African countries and two disputed areas, namely Somaliland and Western Sahara (see the list of African countries below).
What are the major religions of sub-Saharan Africa?
Christianity and Islam are the two dominant religions in sub-Saharan Africa, together accounting for more than 93% of the population.
What human rights are being violated in Africa?
Different types of violence and maltreatment wreak havoc on the lives of numerous children in Africa. These include economic and sexual abuse, gender bias in education, and being caught in the crossfire during armed conflicts.
Why is Northern Africa a desert?
The answer lies in the climate of the Arctic and northern high latitudes. … However, around 5,500 years ago there was a sudden shift in climate in northern Africa leading to rapid acidification of the area. What was once a tropical, wet, and thriving environment suddenly turned into the desolate desert we see today.
Which desert separates North and South Africa?
Author of Hunter and Habitat in the Central Kalahari Desert and others. Kalahari Desert, large basinlike plain of the interior plateau of Southern Africa. It occupies almost all of Botswana, the eastern third of Namibia, and the northernmost part of Northern Cape province in South Africa.