Tea in the Sahara

You never realize how much Africa there is around you until you start looking. Here is a beautiful number, 'Tea in the Sahara', from The Police.

Languages in Sub-Saharan Africa

Image from here.

Linguistically, sub-Saharan Africa is dominated by the Niger-Congo phylum (distribution shown in yellow), with pockets of Khoi-San in Southern Africa, Nilo-Saharan in Central and East Africa, and Afro-Asiatic in the Horn of Africa. Read more here.

Sub-Saharan Africa

We often hear the term "Sub-Saharan Africa". What area does this term refer to?

• Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographical term used to describe the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara, or those African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara.
• It contrasts with North Africa, which is considered a part of the Arab World.
  The Sahel is the transitional zone between the Sahara and the tropical savanna (the Sudan region) and forest-savanna mosaic to the south.
• The Horn of Africa and large parts of Sudan are geographically part of sub-Saharan Africa, but nevertheless show strong Middle Eastern influence and are also part of the Arab world.
• The Sub-Saharan region is also known as Black Africa, in reference to its many black populations.
  

Simplified climatic map of Africa: Sub-Saharan Africa consists of the arid Sahel and the Horn of Africa in the north (yellow), the tropical savannas (light green) and the tropical rainforests (dark green) of Equatorial Africa, and the arid Kalahari Basin (yellow) and the "Mediterranean" south coast (olive) of Southern Africa. The numbers shown correspond to the dates of iron artifacts associated with the Bantu expansion.

The Sahara Desert

• The Sahara ("The Greatest Desert") is the world's largest hot desert.
• At over 9,000,000 square kilometers (3,500,000 sq mi), it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as the United States or the continent of Europe.
• The desert stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean.
• The Sahara divides the continent of Africa into North and Sub-Saharan Africa.
• To the south, it is delimited by the Sahel: a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna that comprises the northern region of central and western Sub-Saharan Africa.
• The Sahara covers huge parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia.
• Here's a beautiful image of the Sahara.
• Read more here.