Southern Africa
Southern Africa is the southernmost region of Africa. No definition is agreed upon, but some groupings include the United Nations geoscheme, the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community, and the physical geography definition based on the physical characteristics of the land.
For the country, see South Africa. For the region of the African Union, see Regions of the African Union § Southern.
Defined by physical geography, Southern Africa is home to a number of river systems; the Zambezi River is the most prominent. The Zambezi flows from the northwest corner of Zambia and western Angola to the Indian Ocean on the coast of Mozambique. Along the way, it flows over Victoria Falls on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Victoria Falls is one of the largest waterfalls in the world and a major tourist attraction for the region.[1]
Southern Africa includes both subtropical and temperate climates, with the Tropic of Capricorn running through the middle of the region, dividing it into its subtropical and temperate halves. Countries commonly included in Southern Africa include Angola, Botswana, the Comoros, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In cultural geography, the island country of Madagascar is often not included due to its distinct language and cultural heritage.[1]
Botswana
(Swaziland)
Eswatini
Lesotho
Namibia
South Africa
Climate[edit]
The climate of the region is broadly divided into subtropical in the north and temperate in the south, but also includes humid-subtropical, Mediterranean-climate, highland-subtropical, oceanic, desert, and semi-arid regions. Except for lower parts of Zambia and interior areas of Namibia and Botswana, the region rarely suffers from extreme heat. In addition, the winter presents mostly as mild and dry, except in the southwest. Cool southeasterly winds and high humidity bring cool conditions in the winter. The Namib Desert is the driest area in the region.
Altitude plays an outsize role in moderating the temperatures of the South African Highveld, Lesotho, and much of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The prairie region of central and northeast South Africa, the country of Zimbabwe, and parts of Zambia are known as the veldt, divided into the Bushveld and Highveld. There are high temperatures and low rainfall within the Zambezi and Limpopo river valleys, probably due to the lower altitude.
The Western Cape has a Mediterranean vegetation and climate, including the unique fynbos, grading eastward into an oceanic climate along the Garden Route to Gqeberha and East London.[9] The Namib and Kalahari deserts form arid lands in the centre-west, separating the highlands, woodlands, croplands, and pastures of the wetter and higher East from the Atlantic Ocean. In addition, the Drakensberg and Eastern Highlands separate the highland areas and coastal plains centred on Mozambique in the north and KwaZulu-Natal in the south, the latter of which are often prone to flooding every few years. In the east, the river systems of the Zambezi and Limpopo basin form natural barriers and sea lanes between Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.[9]
Across most of southern Africa, apart from the Western Cape in South Africa, the major rainfall season is during the southern-hemisphere summer, from December to February. In the Western Cape, the rainfall maximum occurs from June through August.
There are a number of important rainfall-producing weather systems in southern Africa. These include tropical-extra-tropical cloud bands, tropical lows, and tropical cyclones, cut-off lows, and mesoscale convective systems. Winter midlatitude storms account for the June–August rainfall maximum in the western cape.
Year-to-year variability in rainfall, including drought, is associated with changes in global and regional sea surface temperatures. These include the El Nino Southern Oscillation, the Subtropical Indian Ocean Dipole, and changes in the Benguela Current region in the southeast Atlantic.
Future climate projections suggest that much of southern Africa will get hotter and drier in response to global climate change.
Environment[edit]
Southern Africa has a wide diversity of ecoregions including grassland, bushveld, karoo, savannah and riparian zones. Even though considerable disturbance has occurred in some regions from habitat loss due to human population density or export-focused development, there remain significant numbers of various wildlife species, including white rhino, lion,[21] African leopard, impala, kudu, blue wildebeest, vervet monkey and elephant. It has complex Plateaus that create massive mountain structures along the South African border.
There are numerous environmental issues in Southern Africa, including air pollution and desertification.
Further information in the sections of Architecture of Africa:
Agriculture and food security[edit]
Some key factors affecting the food security within the regions including political instability, poor governance, droughts, population growth, urbanisation, poverty, low economic growth, inadequate agricultural policies, trade terms and regimes, resource degradation and the recent increase in HIV/AIDS.[23][24]
These factors vary from country to country. For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has favourable climatic and physical conditions, but performs far below its capacity in food provision due to political instability and poor governance. In contrast, semi-arid countries such as Botswana and Namibia, produce insufficient food, but successfully achieve food security through food imports due to economic growth, political stability and good governance. The Republic of South Africa is a major food producer and exporter in the region.[25]
Data on agricultural production trends and food insecurity especially in term of food availability for Southern Africa is readily available through the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) - Food, Agriculture and Nature Resource Directorate (FARN). However, this data might not fully capture the reality of a region with large urban populations and where food insecurity goes beyond per-capita availability to issues of access and dietary adequacy.[26][27]
Urban food security has been noted as an emerging area of concern in the region, with recent data showing high levels of food insecurity amongst low-income households. In a study of eleven cities in nine countries: Blantyre, Cape Town, Gaborone, Harare, Johannesburg, Lusaka, Maputo, Manzini, Maseru, Durban, and Windhoek, only 17% of households were categorized as 'food-secure' while more than half (57%) of all households surveyed were found to be 'severely food-insecure'.[28]
Some factors affecting urban food insecurity include climate change with potential impact on agricultural productivity, the expansion of supermarkets in the region, which is changing the way people obtain food in the city, rural-to-urban migration, unemployment, and poverty.[29][30][31][32] The issue of food insecurity in general and urban food insecurity in particular in the region is also characterized by an increased consumption of caloric junk food and processed foods leading to potential increase in the co-existence of undernutrition and dietary-related chronic diseases such as obesity and hypertension.[33][34] In South Africa for example, while over 50% experience hunger, 61% are overweight or morbidly obese.[35][36][37] There is only limited data on the other Southern African countries.
From 2018 to 2021, parts of the region suffered from a period of drought.[38]