sub-Saharan African

Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the African countries and territories that are situated fully in that specified region, the term may also include polities that only have part of their territory located in that region, per the definition of the United Nations (UN). This is considered a non-standardized geographical region with the number of countries included varying from 46 to 48 depending on the organization describing the region (e.g. UN, WHO, World Bank, etc.). The African Union uses a different regional breakdown, recognizing all 55 member states on the continent - grouping them into 5 distinct and standard regions.

The term serves as a grouping counterpart to North Africa, which is instead grouped with the definition of MENA (i.e. Middle East–North Africa) as it is part of the Arab world, and most North African states are likewise members of the Arab League. However, while they are also member states of the Arab League, the Comoros, Djibouti, Somalia, and Mauritania (and sometimes Sudan) are all geographically considered to be part of sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, the UN Development Programme applies the "sub-Saharan" classification to 46 of Africa's 55 countries, excluding Djibouti, SADR, Somalia, and Sudan.

Since probably 3900 BCE, the Saharan and sub-Saharan regions of Africa have been separated by the extremely harsh climate of the sparsely populated Sahara, forming an effective barrier that is interrupted only by the Nile in Sudan, though navigation on the Nile was blocked by the Sudd and the river's cataracts. There is also an evident genetic divide between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa that dates back to the Neolithic. The Sahara pump theory explains how flora and fauna (including ''Homo sapiens'') left Africa to penetrate Eurasia and beyond. African pluvial periods are associated with a " Wet Sahara" phase, during which larger lakes and more rivers existed.

Nomenclature

The ancient Greeks sometimes referred to sub-Saharan Africa as ''Aethiopia'', but sometimes also applied this name more specifically to a state, originally applied to the Kingdom of Kush and the Sudan area, but then usurped by Axum in the 4th century which led to the name being designated to the nation of Ethiopia.

Geographers historically divided the region into several distinct ethnographic sections based on each area's respective inhabitants.

Commentators in Arabic in the medieval period used the general term ''bilâd as-sûdân'' ('Land of the Blacks') for the vast Sudan region (an expression denoting West and Central Africa), or sometimes extending from the coast of West Africa to Western Sudan.Nehemia Levtzion, Randall Lee Pouwels, The History of Islam in Africa, (Ohio University Press, 2000), p. 255. Its equivalent in Southeast Africa was ''Zanj'' ('Country of the Blacks'), which was situated in the vicinity of the Great Lakes region.

The geographers drew an explicit ethnographic distinction between the Sudan region and its analogue Zanj, from the area to their extreme east on the Red Sea coast in the Horn of Africa. In modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea was ''Al-Habash'' or Abyssinia,Sven Rubenson, The survival of Ethiopian independence, (Tsehai, 2003), p. 30. which was inhabited by the ''Habash'' or Abyssinians, who were the forebears of the Habesha.Jonah Blank, Mullahs on the mainframe: Islam and modernity among the Daudi Bohras, (University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 163. In northern Somalia was '' Barbara'' or the ''Bilad al-Barbar'' ("Land of the Berbers"), which was inhabited by the Eastern ''Baribah'' or ''Barbaroi'', as the ancestors of the Somalis were referred to by medieval Arab and ancient Greek geographers, respectively.F.R.C. Bagley et al., ''The Last Great Muslim Empires'', (Brill: 1997), p. 174 Bethwell A. Ogot, ''Zamani: A Survey of East African History'', (East African Publishing House: 1974), p. 104James Hastings, ''Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics Part 12: V. 12'', (Kessinger Publishing, LLC: 2003), p. 490

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the populations south of the Sahara were divided into three broad ancestral groups: Hamites and Semites family; Negroes in most of the rest of the subcontinent (hence, the toponym ''Black Africa'' for Africa south of the Sahara), who spoke languages belonging to the Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan families; and Khoisan in Southern Africa, who spoke languages belonging to the Khoisan family.

The term "sub-Saharan" has been criticized by Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe as racist because it refers to the area south of the Sahara by geographical conventions (as opposed to North Africa, which refers to a cardinal direction). Ekwe-Ekwe considers the term to imply a linguistic connotation of inferiority through its use of the prefix '' sub-'' (Latin for 'under' or 'below'; cf. sub-arctic), which he sees as a linguistic vestige of European colonialism.

Climate zones and ecoregions

Sub-Saharan Africa has a wide variety of climate zones or biomes. South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in particular are considered megadiverse countries. It has a dry winter season and a wet summer season.
* The Sahel extends across all of Africa at a latitude of about 10° to 15° N. Countries that include parts of the Sahara Desert proper in their northern territories and parts of the Sahel in their southern region include Mauritania, Mali, Niger