Natural wonders of Africa

16 to explore

• Watch Natural wonder Great Rift Valley The Great Rift Valley is a huge valley that runs through East Africa, where the continent is slowly being stretched and pulled apart. Long, steep cliffs line its sides, its floor holds lakes full of flamingos, and giant volcanoes such as Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya rose beside it. Scientists think a new ocean may one day open here.
• Watch Natural wonder Kalahari Desert The Kalahari is a giant sandy plain in southern Africa, covering almost all of Botswana and parts of Namibia and South Africa. It stretches about 1,600 kilometers from north to south. Its southwest is a true desert, with long red dunes, while its north is green with woodlands and even has a huge swamp, the Okavango Delta.
• Watch Natural wonder Lake Tanganyika Lake Tanganyika lies in a deep crack in Africa called a rift valley. Britannica calls it the longest freshwater lake in the world, and only Lake Baikal, in Russia, is deeper. Four countries share it: Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Zambia. Its water is home to about 250 kinds of cichlid fish found nowhere else.
• Watch Natural wonder Lake Victoria Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa, and Britannica says only Lake Superior, in North America, is a bigger freshwater lake. It is shared by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The lake is wide but shallow, its only outlet is the Nile, and it is home to hundreds of kinds of colorful fish called cichlids.
• Watch Natural wonder Mount Kenya Mount Kenya is the second highest mountain in Africa, 5,199 meters tall, standing just south of the Equator in central Kenya. It is an old volcano that stopped erupting millions of years ago and has been carved by glaciers into sharp rocky peaks. Its slopes climb through farms, forests, bamboo and strange giant plants up to small, shrinking glaciers.
• Watch Natural wonder Mount Kilimanjaro Mount Kilimanjaro, in northeastern Tanzania, is what UNESCO calls the highest mountain in Africa: its top is 5,895 meters high. It is a huge volcanic mountain standing alone above the plains, and as you climb it you pass through farms, forest, moorland and high alpine desert to its icy top.
• Watch Natural wonder Mount Nyiragongo Mount Nyiragongo is a steep volcano in the Virunga Mountains of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, near the border with Rwanda and just north of Lake Kivu. It is 3,470 meters high, and its deep summit crater often holds a lake of bubbling lava. Its lava is very runny, and eruptions in 1977, 2002 and 2021 sent lava flowing down its sides toward the city of Goma.
• Watch Natural wonder Namib The Namib is a cool desert that runs for about 1,900 kilometers along Africa's Atlantic coast, from Angola through Namibia into South Africa. It gets almost no rain, but cold ocean water makes thick fog that drifts inland. UNESCO says its Namib Sand Sea is the only coastal desert in the world with huge dune fields influenced by fog.
• Watch Natural wonder Ngorongoro Conservation Area The Ngorongoro Conservation Area in northern Tanzania holds the Ngorongoro Crater, a giant bowl about 16 to 20 kilometers across, left when an ancient volcano collapsed about 2.5 million years ago. Around 25,000 large animals live in and around the crater. The area also protects Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli, where scientists have found important evidence of how humans evolved.
• Watch Natural wonder Nile The Nile flows north through northeastern Africa to the Mediterranean Sea, and its basin is shared by 11 countries. Its length is usually given as about 6,650 kilometers. Two great branches, the White Nile and the Blue Nile, meet at Khartoum in Sudan, and the green strip of farmland along its banks made it the lifeline of ancient Egypt.
• Watch Natural wonder Okavango Delta The Okavango Delta, in northwestern Botswana, is a huge wetland in the middle of a dry land. The Okavango River flows in from Angola, spreads out into channels, lagoons and grassy plains, and then soaks away into the sands of the Kalahari instead of reaching the sea. Its flood arrives in the dry season, drawing elephants, buffalo, zebras and many other animals.
• Watch Natural wonder River Congo The Congo is Africa's second-longest river, about 4,700 kilometers long. It curves in a giant arc through the rainforests of central Africa and empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Rain falls in its basin all year, so it carries a huge amount of water, and its wild lower rapids are home to about 320 kinds of fish, about 90 of them found nowhere else.
• Watch Natural wonder Sahara The Sahara fills almost all of northern Africa. Britannica calls it the largest hot desert in the world: about 4,800 kilometers from east to west and about 8.6 million square kilometers in all. Only about a quarter of it is sand dunes; the rest is gravel plains, rocky plateaus and mountains.
• Watch Natural wonder Serengeti National Park Serengeti National Park in northern Tanzania protects 14,763 square kilometers of grassy plains and woodlands. Each year more than a million wildebeest, with zebras and gazelles, travel a great loop across the Serengeti and into Kenya in search of grass and water, followed by lions and other predators.
• Watch Natural wonder Victoria Falls Victoria Falls, on the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe, is about 1,708 meters wide and up to 108 meters deep. UNESCO calls it the largest curtain of falling water in the world, and its spray can be seen from tens of kilometers away.
• Watch Natural wonder Virunga National Park Virunga National Park, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was founded in 1925; the park describes itself as Africa's first national park. It stretches from active volcanoes in the south to the snowy Rwenzori Mountains in the north. About one third of the world's mountain gorillas live in its forests, along with elephants, hippos, chimpanzees and hundreds of kinds of birds.