How does the physical geography of Africa affect the people that live there?

Answer 1

Geography affects life in Iraq in quite a few ways:

- The Tigris and Euphrates river provide access to freshwater.

- Current issues are:

- Government destroying natural habitat poses serious threat to the area's wildlife populations.

- A lot of air pollution, soil degradation (salination), and erosion; desertification.

Source(s):

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/iz.html

Answer 2

Africa has a number of distinct geographical regions and features; these have in the past limited travel and expansion (overland and water), which has determined to a great degree how Africa was settled and why there are areas of higher population density than others.

Coastline:

Some of Africa's coastline is extremely rocky and has treacherous currents, this would have prevented the establishment of fishing communities along these stretches in favour of more navigable waters. Some of the most treacherous areas are along the west coast of Namibia, the so called Skeleton Coast, due to the vast number of wrecked ships.

Rivers:

Population growth tends to be congregated along river banks due to communication, travel and abundance of food. Some of these rivers though are not navigable, or are located in deep gorge's, this would have excluded them from settlement. Rivers with wide mouths leading to the ocean normally provide natural harbours and inland passage, these are normally prime settlement points along the coast. The most famous river in Africa is easily the Nile, which is the longest river in the world, while it stretches from the North coast of Africa to almost the equator it is not fully navigable due to the strong current and series of cataracts along its course (see the point about Egyptian expansionism below).

Mountain ranges:

There are certain mountain ranges and plateaus that are extremely hard to traverse, these would have formed natural barriers to expansion. Examples of this would include the Drakensberg in southern Africa and to an extent the Atlas Mountains of North Africa.

Faults:

The most famous of these being the Great Rift Valley, created a natural barrier between the east and west portions of the fault.

Deserts:

The largest sand desert in the world, the Sahara stretches east-west over most of north Africa, with only the fringe areas to the north (along the coast) seeing any large scale population settlement. This barrier in fact prevented ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians from becoming a more prominent power in North and central Africa. Deserts, by virtue of their nature are normally sparsely populated.

Other:

Early expansion of Africa, including current settlement is also limited by certain diseases which are prevalent in certain areas, these are normally mosquito related (malaria, Yellow Fever etc.), but a few centuries ago Tse Fly was also an limiting factor to human settlement. Equine flu is yet another, this limited the use of horses by early settlers as a means of transport due to its persistence in certain regions. While these are not specifically geographical features, they can be considered secondary, as they pests/ insects etc. which cause them are propagated by geographical features (rivers, swamps etc.).

Answer 3

It affects it Syria because they are practically a desert, so farming is something that they can not really do. But they have found other ways to to be a good financial country. They have a lot of oil feilds and they are a big tourist center, because of there dunes and historic sites.

Answer 4

People tend to live close to fresh water bodies in the Middle East and away from the larger deserts, leaving most of the Middle East marginally populated.