Physical Features
This nickname is given to Africa because most of the continent is made of high, flat land.
Answer: What is the Plateau Continent?
This human-made waterway connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea to shorten trade routes to Asia.
Answer: What is the Suez Canal?
Roughly the size of the United States, this is the largest hot desert on Earth.
Answer: What is the Sahara Desert?
This liquid fossil fuel is the primary source of wealth and environmental pollution in Nigeria's Niger Delta.
Answer: What is oil (or petroleum)?
The mining and sale of this precious gemstone helped finance a decades-long civil war in Angola.
Answer: What are diamonds?
Stretching over 4,000 miles, this is the longest river on Earth.
Answer: What is the Nile River?
This bowl-shaped dip in the land often collects water, such as the one surrounding Lake Chad.
Answer: What is a basin?
This isolated area in a desert provides water from underground aquifers to support vegetation.
Answer: What is an oasis?
This environmental process occurs when dry grasslands turn into desert due to drought and land misuse.
Answer: What is desertification?
Situated along the bend of the Niger River, this historic trading center connected camel caravans with gold fields.
Answer: What is Timbuktu?
This geographic term describes a steep cliff or slope marking the edge of a plateau.
Answer: What is an escarpment?
This narrow body of water, less than 9 miles wide, separates North Africa from Spain.
Answer: What is the Strait of Gibraltar?
Africa stays warm year-round because most of it lies between these two tropical lines of latitude.
Answer: What are the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn?
Egypt constructed this large dam on the Nile River in 1970 to regulate floods and generate hydroelectric power.
Answer: What is the Aswan High Dam?
This Greek historian wrote the classic observation that "Egypt was the gift of the Nile".
Answer: Who is Herodotus?
Located in Tanzania, this is the highest free-standing mountain in the world.
Answer: What is Mount Kilimanjaro?
These physical river features, including waterfalls and rapids, make boat travel difficult on many African rivers.
Answer: What are cataracts (or waterfalls / rapids)?
This narrow strip of semi-arid grassland is located directly south of the Sahara Desert.
Answer: What is the Sahel?
Farmers and herders worsen desertification in the Sahel by clearing trees and doing this with livestock.
Answer: What is overgrazing?
In the late 1800s, these foreign powers colonized Africa and extracted its resources primarily for export.
Answer: Who are European colonial powers?
This 4,000-mile series of trenches in East Africa was created by tectonic plates pulling apart.
Answer: What is the Great Rift Valley?
This West African river flows inland toward the desert before bending south into the Gulf of Guinea.
Answer: What is the Niger River?
This 1,600-mile mountain range stretches across Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.
Answer: What are the Atlas Mountains?
Communities in the Sahel are planting wide belts of these to help anchor soil and halt the spreading desert.
Answer: What are trees?
Trans-Saharan trade routes became famous for exchanging West African gold for this essential northern preservative.
Answer: What is salt?