Sub-Saharan Africa
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Africa_satellite_orthographic.jpg
This division of Africa has arisen from the perception of North Africa as predominantly Arab or Berber in ethnicity and culture, and the perception of sub-Saharan Africa as predominantly black in ethnicity or culture. The two regions are separated by the sparsely populated Sahara Desert. North Africa has long been integrated with the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Sub-Saharan Africa, on the other hand, had sporadic contacts with the rest of the world before the modern era partially due to the effect of endemic diseases like Malaria. While the coasts received visits by traders, much of the interior of the continent remained unknown to the outside world until the colonial era.
With a few exceptions, such as Mauritius and South Africa, sub-Saharan Africa is one of the poorest regions in the world, and it contains many of the least developed countries. (See Economy of Africa.)
The exact position of the dividing line between the two regions is not clearly defined because of discontinuous and blurred break-points between national boundaries, ecologies and ethnicities. However, according to one classification of the two regions, sub-Saharan Africa includes forty-eight nations. Forty-two of these nations are on the African mainland. In addition, four island nations in the southwest Indian Ocean (Madagascar, The Comoros, Mauritius, and Seychelles) and two island nations in the Atlantic Ocean (Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe) are considered part of Africa. According to this classification scheme, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa are:
Central Africa
Eastern Africa
Southern Africa
- Angola
- Botswana
- Lesotho
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Mauritius
- Mozambique
- Namibia
- R鵮ion
- Swaziland
- South Africa
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
Western Africa
- Benin
- Burkina Faso
- Cameroon
- Cape Verde
- C?d'Ivoire
- Equatorial Guinea
- Gabon
- The Gambia
- Ghana
- Guinea-Bissau
- Liberia
- Mali
- Niger
- Nigeria
- S㯠Tom頡nd Pr�ipe
- Senegal
- Sierra Leone
- Togo
External link
- USA State department travel tips (http://travel.state.gov/tips_sub-saharanafica.html)
- Photos and information from Malawi, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe (http://www.junglephotos.com/africa)