Africa Vocabulary

• Basin- a hollow or depression in the earth's surface, wholly or partly surrounded by higher land
• Nile River-the world's longest river, flowing over 4,000 miles through the Sudan Basin into Uganda, Sudan and Egypt
• Rift Valley-a long, thin valley created by the moving apart of the continental plates, present in East Africa, stretching over 4,000 miles from Jordan in Southwest Asia to Mozambique in Southern Africa
• Mount Kilimanjaro-a volcano in Tanzania in Africa, also Africa's highest peak
• Escarpment-a steep slope with a nearly flat plateau top
• Sahara-the largest desert in the world, stretching 3,000 miles across the African continent, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea & measuring 1,200 miles from north to south
• Serengeti Plain-an area of East Africa containing some of the best grasslands in the world & many grazing animals, in northern Tanzania
• Niger Delta-delta of the Niger River & an area with rich oil deposits
• Sahel-a narrow band of dry grassland, running east to west on the southern edge of the Sahara, that's used for farming & herding
• Desertification-an expansion of dry conditions to moist areas that are next to deserts
• Aswan High Dam-a dam on the Nile River in Egypt, complete in 1970, which increased Egypt's farmable land by 50% & protected from droughts and floods
• Silt-loose sedimentary material containing very small rock particles, formed by river deposits & very fertile
• Olduvai Gorge-a site of fossil beds in northern Tanzania containing the most continuous known record of humanity over the past 2 million years, including fossils from 65 hominids
• Aksum-an important trading capital from the first to the eigth centuries A.D. in what is now Ethiopia; it flourished due to its location near the Red Sea & the Indian Ocean
• Berlin Conference-a conference of 14 European nations held in 1884-1885 in Berlin, Germany to establish rules for political control of Africa
• Cash Crop-a crop grown for direct sale, and not for use in a region, such as coffee, tea, and sugar in Africa
• Pandemic-a disease affecting a large population over a wide geographic area
• Carthage-one of the greatest empires of ancient Africa, situated on a triangular peninsula on the Gulf of Tunis on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea
• Rai-a kind of popular Algerian music developed in the 1920s by poor urban children that's fast paced with danceable rhythms; sometimes used as a form of rebellion to expose political unhappiness
• Bantu Migrations-the movement of the Bantu peoples southward throughout Africa, spreading their language & culture; from around 500 B.C. to around A.D. 1000
• King Leopold II-Belgian king who opened up the African interior to European trade along the Congo River & by 1884 controlled the area: Congo Free State
• Mutapa Empire-a state founded in the 15th century by a man named Mutota & that extended throughout all of present day Zimbabwe except the eastern part
• Apartheid-a policy of complete separation of the races instituted by the white minority government of South Africa in 1948
• Nelson Mandela-one of the leaders of the African National Congress who led a struggle to end apartheid & was elected President in 1994 in the first all race election in South Africa
• "One-Commodity" Country-a country that relies on one principle export for much of its earnings
• Commodity-an agricultural or mining product that can be sold
• Diversity-to increase the variety of products in a country's economy; to promote manufacturing & other industries in order to achieve growth and stability
• AIDS-a disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus/HIV
• Cholera-a treatable, infectious disease that can be fatal & is caused by a lack of adequate sanitation & a clean water supply
• Malaria-infectious disease of red blood cells, carried by mosquitoes that's characterized by chills, fevers, and sweating
• Tuberculosis-a respiratory infection spread by human contact, which often accompanies AIDS
• UNAIDS-the UN program that studies the world's AIDS epidemic