Central Africa's Physical Geography

Central Africa has some variety of physical geography. Central Africa's main physical feature is the Congo Basin. A basin is a flat area that is surrounded by mountains and plateaus. Some of the mountains around the Congo Basin rise up to 16,700 feet or 5,090 meters! The Congo River is another feature that makes Central Africa unique. The Congo River connects with many, many smaller river and most of them empty into the Indian Ocean. Near the mouth, many rapids and waterfalls come along. The most famous waterfalls are the Victoria Falls. Central Africa's climate is humid, warm and very tropical, it has a very dense forest vegetation. The trees form a complete canopy, which lets no light go through and get to the ground. Therefore, not many animals live on the ground, but mostly on or in the trees. Some of the ground living animals include gorillas, elephants, boars and okapis (brown, short necked giraffes). The tree living animals include insects, birds, monkeys, bats and snakes. All these animals are in danger. Forest is being cut down and they are hunted. To help the animals, the government has set up national parks to promote protection of the forest and other environmental issues. The northern and southern areas of the Congo Basin are areas with tropical savannas. These areas are warm but they are dry. Central Africa's resources include timber, dams which produce electricity, oil, natural gas, oil valuable minerals, copper, uranium, tin, zinc, gold and cobalt. As you can see, Central Africa hast many forests but also savannas, a big variety of animals and many natural resources.