SURFACE WATER IN AFRICA
▻http://www.oecd.org/swac/maps/34-eaudesurface.pdf
Via Laurent Jégou sur Twitter
Few indicators offer a more mixed picture of Africa than that of waterways. Represented according to their permanent
or seasonal nature, African waterways seem to cut the continent into a succession of zones of unequal thickness.
North of the Equator, the Atlas forms a narrow humid strip facing the Saharan expanses, which cover almost a third
of the continent and whose numerous wadis, dried out since the late Neolithic, fl ow only episodically. South of the
Sahara, permanent watercourses dominate, except in the Horn and the Kalahari. Only a handful of rivers born in the
Great Lakes Region (Nile), Ethiopian plateaus (Juba, Sheebele) and the Drakensberg (Orange) manage to cross the arid
dams of the Sahara, Somalia and Namibia. Limited to surface water, the map cannot show the existence, sometimes
considerable as in the Sahara, of underground reserves that were formed millennia ago and give witness to more
favourable climatic episodes.