Southern Africa
[8] Southern Africa is set apart from other Sub-Saharan African regions because of its mineral resources, including copper, diamonds, gold, zinc, chromium, platinum, manganese, iron ore, and coal.
Countries in Southern Africa are larger in geographic area, except three smaller landlocked states: Lesotho, Swaziland, and Malawi.
The larger states- South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, and Angola—all have extensive mineral deposits.
Except for lower parts of Zambia and interior areas of Namibia and Botswana, the region rarely suffers from extreme heat.
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.
[11] 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 the east, the river systems of the Zambezi and Limpopo basin form natural barriers and sea lanes between Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
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.
East and southern Africa are among the earliest regions where modern humans (Homo sapiens) and their predecessors are believed to have lived.
The capital, which sits near present-day Masvingo, is located at Great Zimbabwe, which are the largest stone structure in precolonial Southern Africa.
The state was consolidated and extended under the rule of Dingiswayo who produced a disciplined and highly organised army for the first time in the region.
After an initial phase from 1945 to 1958, as a consolidation of white power, decolonization succeeded in its achievement when High Commission territories and overseas departments such as Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius, Swaziland, Madagascar and the Comoros became independent states from British and French rule.
From the end of the period of colonial rule, imperial interests controlled the economies of the region and South Africa became the dominant economic power in the late 20th century.
Some of its main exports including platinum, diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, chromium and uranium, Southern Africa still faces some of the problems that the rest of the continent does.
[19] While colonialism has left its mark on the development over the course of history,[20][21] today poverty, corruption, and HIV/AIDS are some of the biggest factors impeding economic growth.
In addition, South Africa and Zimbabwe in particular, face high emigration among their skilled workers leading to a significant brain drain to western economies and billions lost in human capital flight.
Zimbabwe maintains a smaller banking and real estate sector along with what remains of its manufacturing industry, despite a protracted economic crisis.
The main objective of the power pool is to develop a world class, robust and safe interconnected electrical system across the Southern African Region.
Whilst moderately successful by African standards, the region largely lags behind their Asian counterparts in innovation, foreign direct investment, STEM sciences and research and development.
[25] 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,[26] African leopard, impala, kudu, blue wildebeest, vervet monkey and elephant.
Due to the Bantu expansion, the majority of African ethnic groups in this region, including the Xhosa, Zulu, Tsonga, Swazi, Northern Ndebele, Southern Ndebele, Tswana, Sotho, Pedi, Mbundu, Ovimbundu, Shona, Chaga and Sukuma, speak Bantu languages.
Further information in the sections of Architecture of Africa: Further information in the sections of History of science and technology in Africa: 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.
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.
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.
