Geography Of Africa

greeting students and welcome to this edition of mr. Sollers social studies podcast now in today's edition we're going to be getting an introduction to the geography of Africa that means we're going to be taking on an entire continent so there's a lot that we need to discuss but the very first question that we need to ask is where in the world is Africa well Africa is the continent that's located south of Europe and southwest of Asia that location made it an ideal trading partner for many of its neighbors but this isn't just about location the other thing that you need to know about Africa is Africa is huge now that's a pretty bold statement so what do we mean when we say Africa is huge well for starters Africa is the second largest continent in the world it runs 5,000 miles from the Mediterranean Sea all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and 4,600 miles from Cape Verde all the way over to Somalia that gives Africa a grand total of 30 million square kilometers which is three times the size of the United States or is larger than all 18 of these major countries put together that's pretty huge the other way to measure the size of Africa is to talk about the fact that there are over a billion people who are living in Africa now that puts Africa second to Asia in both of those categories but there are some places where Africa comes out on top so for example Africa has the most countries of any continent in the world there are 54 different nations in Africa Africa also boasts the largest desert in the world we're talking about the Sahara Desert but Africa has many other deserts like the one that's shown in this satellite image here Africa also has the largest river in the world the Nile River so there's lots of different ways to measure it but no matter how you look at it Africa is huge but I also want you to understand that Africa is as diverse as it is huge but what do we mean when we say diversity well one of the ways to talk about diversity in African geography is to talk about biomes biomes refer to climate and remember we're talking about an area as large as a continent so there's bound to be a wide range of climates and when talking about climates an important term to know is biomes all right so what is a biome well biomes are climate zones and throughout that area throughout that region you see the same average temperature and average precipitation and what that means is that you will also see very similar plants and animals living in that region as well all right so what are the biomes of Africa well there's four of them deserts rainforests savanna and chaparral but let's start with deserts now deserts are areas that receive very very little rainfall on average less than ten inches of rain per year that's pretty dry but the most famous desert in Africa is of course the Sahara Desert now some parts of the Sahara Desert are sandy like what you see here other parts of the Sahara Desert are rocky but in either case the fact that it's dry is going to make it a very difficult barrier to cross there are trading networks that cross the Sahara Desert but they had to be adapted to that particular biome all right let's look in the other direction at rain forests now while deserts were very dry rain forests are very wet many parts of the African rainforest received over a hundred inches of rain per year that's a lot of rain but it's not just the rain itself that's particularly important it's also the biodiversity there are many different plant and animal species that can only be found in the rain first and that's one of the things that makes the rain force so valuable not just in Africa but throughout the earth now let's also talk a little bit about the savanna the savanna are the wide open grasslands of Africa peppered with a few trees thrown in there but it's not just the plants it's also the animals that can be found in the African savanna many of the animal species for example giraffes or elephants that are commonly associated with Africa can be found within the savanna biome so many of the images that you see of Africa oftentimes what you're really looking at is that savanna biome but there's one more biome that we have to talk about as well and that is the chaparral now there's not very much chaparral that can be found in Africa there's some located right along the northern coast of Africa along the Mediterranean there's also some down in South Africa as well the the chaparral has short woody shrubs in fact you can find chaparral outside of Africa in the United States if you wanted to get an idea of what chaparral looks like the easiest thing would probably be to take a trip to California because you could see some great examples of that biome located there as well so those are our four biomes of Africa deserts rainforests Savannah and chaparral there's also a wide range of physical features in Africa first there's of course the deserts like what we talked about earlier the most famous deserts in Africa are the Sahara Desert the Namib Desert and the Kalahari Desert but there's also bodies of water that can be found in Africa and there's lots of different examples let's start with rivers there's of course the Nile River which is the most famous river in Africa because it's the longest river in the world but there's also the Congo River which is the ninth longest river in the world that can also be found in for cut but it's not just rivers Africa actually has its own version of the Great Lakes with famous Lakes like Lake Malawi Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika as well but in addition to these Lakes you also have to recognize the major bodies of water that form the border around Africa including the Mediterranean Sea in the Red Sea and of course the Atlantic Ocean in the Indian Ocean then there's elevated land now the first thing that we need to address here is that Africa is a plateau what is a plateau that's an area of fairly level high ground relative to the surrounding area and we're saying that all of Africa is a plateau meaning that Africa itself is elevated land but that doesn't mean that you can't find any mountains in Africa you can find mountain ranges like for example the Atlas Mountains in northwestern Africa that would look very similar to any other mountain range that you might see but Africa also has some interesting mountains like Mount Kilimanjaro here the highest peak in Africa which seems to just rise on its own out of the ground there's another feature that makes Africa unique and that is the Great Rift Valley this refers to a region of Africa that's literally being split apart there are some tectonic plates that are located within or near Africa that are actually moving away from each other and what's what that's doing is creating not just some of the highest elevation in Africa but also Lakes like Lake Tanganyika that are among the deepest in the world this shifting of these tectonic plates creates some of the most breathtaking landscape in all of Africa the final topic that we need to talk about with African geography are natural resources natural resources have always played an important role in the history of Africa whether you're talking about the gold mines that were the basis of the enemies of the great West African nations of Ghana Mali or Songhai or whether you're talking about the rubber trees which were harvested by the Belgians in colonial Africa or even the oil that continues to support some of the regimes ruling Africa today natural resources are an important part of Africa's economy the good news is Africa has lots of natural resources the bad news is these resources are not necessarily evenly distributed between the different African nations nor are they necessarily evenly distributed within nations this can lead to conflicts or even civil war a great example of this is South Sudan which became independent as recently as 2011 the other bad news is that while some countries do have lots of natural resources they don't necessarily have the financial resources to be able to take advantage of them and as a result you can see that African geography continues to influence Africa today well that's it for this edition of mr. Sollers social studies podcasts I hope you have enjoyed it and keep studying the social studies

Channel: MrZoller

Views: 694,762

Rating: 4.5042052 out of 5

Keywords: Geography (Field Of Study), Africa, biomes, Sahara, Nile, Great Rift Valley, Education, School, homeschool, student, lesson, teacher, Lessons, Free, Learn

Id: BPjQGYaBDtg

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 25 2012