The Great Rift Valley

The Great Escarpment is labeled Cape Ranges in Figure 6.1. This landform contributes to the arid conditions of the Namib desert on the west coast. The continent's latitudinal position and tectonic setting have played significant roles in the physical geography of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The rifting on the African continent, shown in Figure 6.4 and in the cross-section in Figure 6.5, resulted from the East African Plateau – the high, relatively level ground in the rift zone. It has also produced the following geographic features.

• Mt. Kilimanjaro – a dormant volcano in Tanzania.
• Mt. Kenya – an extinct volcano in Kenya.
• Lake Victoria – the world's largest tropical lake by area, located in Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya. It is also the source of the White Nile, a tributary to the Nile River.
• Lake Tanganyika – the second oldest, deepest, and largest-by-volume lake in the world (second only to Russia's Lake Baikal) located in Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Zambia.
• Lake Malawi – the sixth deepest lake in the world, located in Malawi, Tanzania, and Mozambique. It is also home to more fish species than any other lake in the world.