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Geography
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Africa is washed by the Mediterranean Sea in the north, the Atlantic Ocean in the west, and the Indian Ocean in the east. Almost in its middle, Africa is crossed by the equator, so most of the continent lies in hot climatic zones. However, there is a diversity of terrains: there are deserts, savannas and forests. Most of the northern part of Africa is occupied by the Sahara Desert. Along its southern border stretches a wide strip of savannas that further on turn into forest-savannas, or bush. This area is referred to as Sudan. Savannas cover the whole of Eastern and most of Southern Africa. In the south there is also a desert – Kalahari – which is not big compared to Sahara. The territories around the equator, the Guinean coast and the basin of the Congo River are covered with wet equatorial forests that are quickly diminishing due to activities of people. There is a theory that the Sahara itself was turned into a desert by man, and before that, it used to be covered with dense grasses, and giraffes and rhinoceroses used to pasture there.
Only on the Mediterranean coast of Africa and in the extreme south the year is divided into summer and winter. On the rest of the territories the seasons differ from each other with the amount of rainfall rather than with temperatures. The year in the savanna zone is usually divided into the dry and the rainy seasons. On the territory of equatorial forests there sometimes are four seasons – two dry and two rainy ones.
Africa is quite densely populated, so less and less space is left for wild nature. In West Africa many languages no longer have a word for “rhinoceros”, and giraffes were last seen there in the middle of the 20th century. In East and South Africa the situation is better – animals are preserved in national parks that attract a lot of tourists.
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