Region Overview

The second largest continent, Africa, is a land of contrasts. To the north lies the great Sahara, the largest desert in the world. Close to the Equator, dense rainforests flourish in the hot, humid climate with its year-round rains. Further away from the Equator, rain is seasonal, producing scrub vegetation and grassland. A line of dramatic highlands, volcanic mountains, gorges, and vast lakes runs through central east Africa, which is part of a huge split in the Earth's crust, known as the Great Rift Valley. But Africa's highest mountain is Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and some of the world's longest rivers, who drain the continent, are the Nile, the Niger, the Congo and the Zambezi.
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