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Travel Guide Africa Sahara



The Sahara is the biggest 'traditional' desert (apart from the polar deserts) in the world and stretches across most of Northern Africa from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean coastline in the north to the Sahel in the south. Its name is derived from the plural Arabic language word for desert (صحارى ṣaḥārā).

The classic pictures of endless sanddunes are true to a certain point, as there are larges areas of 'ergs' (sandsea in Arabic) to be found mainly in Algeria and Libya. Many of its sand dunes reach over 180 metres in height.  Most of the Sahara is gravel and rocks though and there are several mountain ranges within its boundaries as well, including the Ahaggar Mountains in Algeria, the Aïr Mountains in Niger and the Tibesti Mountains in Chad. The latter also has the highest point at 3,415 metres above sea level.




The Sahara extends over 9 million square kilometres and it covers about 1⁄4 of the African continent. It is one of three distinct physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division. The desert landforms of the Sahara are shaped by wind or by extremely rare rainfall and include sand dunes and dune fields or sand seas (erg), stone plateaus (hamada), gravel plains (reg), dry valleys (wadi), dry lakes (oued) and salt flats (shatt or chott).









The Atlantic coastal desert is a narrow strip along the Atlantic coast, where fog generated offshore by the cool Canary Current provides sufficient moisture to sustain a variety of lichens, succulents, and shrubs. It covers 39,900 square kilometres in the south of Morocco and Mauritania.



The South Saharan steppe and woodlands ecoregion is a narrow band running east and west between the hyper-arid Sahara and the Sahel savannas to the south. Movements of the equatorial Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) bring summer rains during July and August which average 100 to 200 mm but vary greatly from year to year. These rains sustain summer pastures of grasses and herbs, with dry woodlands and shrublands along seasonal watercourses. This ecoregion covers 1,101,700 km2 in Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Sudan.

In the West Saharan montane xeric woodlands, several volcanic highlands provide a cooler, moister environment that supports Saharo-Mediterranean woodlands and shrublands. The ecoregion covers 258,100 km2, mostly in the Tassili n'Ajjer of Algeria, with smaller enclaves in the Aïr of Niger, the Dhar Adrar of Mauritania, and the Adrar des Iforas of Mali and Algeria.


The Saharan halophytics is an area of seasonally flooded saline depressions which is home to halophytic (salt-adapted) plant communities. The Saharan halophytics cover 54,000 km2, including the Qattara and Siwa depressions in northern Egypt, the Tunisian salt lakes of central Tunisia, Chott Melghir in Algeria, and smaller areas of Algeria, Mauritania, and The southern part of Morocco.





Getting There and Around

Travelling across the Sahara is possible and there are even possibilities to travel almost exclusively along tarmac roads if you choose to travel along the coastline of Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania. There are other routes though there are more demanding, like the ones across Algeria into Niger. For more information on this and other aspects check the Sahara Overland website.


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This is version 2. Last edited at 10:19 on Oct 1, 15 by Utrecht. 6 articles link to this page.

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