1. Mineral resources
Africa’s known mineral wealth places it among the world’s richest continents. Its very large share of the world’s mineral resources includes coal, petroleum, natural gas, uranium, radium, low-cost thorium, iron ores, chromium, cobalt, copper, lead, zinc, tin, bauxite, titanium, antimony, gold, platinum, tantalum, germanium, lithium, phosphates, and diamonds.
Major deposits of coal are confined to four groups of coal basins—in Southern Africa, North Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Nigeria. Proven petroleum reserves in North Africa occur in Libya, Algeria, Egypt, and Tunisia. Exploration has been concentrated north of the Aïr–Ahaggar massifs; there may also be major Saharan reserves to the south. The other major oil reserves are in the western coastal basin—mainly in Nigeria and also in Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of the Congo—and in Angola and South Sudan. Natural gas reserves are concentrated in basins of North Africa and coastal central Africa.
Southern Africa is said to be one of the world’s seven major uranium provinces. In South Africa the unusual degree of knowledge of reserves derives from the joint occurrence of uranium with gold, a condition that also decreases the cost of production. Other countries with significant uranium deposits are Niger, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Namibia.
2. Metallic deposits
In North Africa reserves of iron ore are concentrated in the Atlas Mountains and in the western Sahara. Egypt, however, has medium-grade reserves, of which the most important are at Al-Ba?riyyah Oasis. The ore deposits in Morocco and Tunisia, which were once of considerable importance, have been severely depleted. Africa’s most significant iron reserves are to be found in western and Southern Africa. It is the sedimentary Precambrian rocks, particularly in western Africa, that have proved the basis of Africa’s role as a major world producer of iron ore. The most significant deposits are in Liberia in the Bomi Hills, Bong and Nimba ranges, and Mano valley; in the extension into Guinea of the Nimba–Simandou ranges, where hematites have been located; in Nigeria and Mauritania, which have large deposits of low-grade ore; and in Gabon, where extensive reserves are present in the northeast. In Southern Africa most iron ore reserves lie in South Africa itself. The chief deposits are at Postmasburg, in the Bushveld Complex, at Thabazimbi, and in the vast low-grade deposits of Pretoria. There are also substantial reserves in Zimbabwe.
Africa’s reserves of minerals used as ferroalloys in the steel industry are even more striking than its enormous share of world iron ore reserves. This is particularly true of chromium. Almost the entire world reserve of chromium is found in Southern Africa and, to a much lesser extent, in western and northeastern Africa. The highest concentrations are found in Zimbabwe, at Great Dyke. South Africa contains the largest deposits of chromite. As compared with these two sources, reserves elsewhere in Africa are relatively small.
Manganese reserves are also considerable. In South Africa reserves of contained manganese are found in the Kalahari Manganese Field and elsewhere. The Mouanda deposit in southeastern Gabon is thought to be among the largest in the world. Ghana is another important source of manganese, having both low-grade and high-grade reserves. Elsewhere in western Africa, manganese deposits are situated in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, as well as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Cameroon. In North Africa manganese is found in Morocco and Algeria.
Africa’s contribution to world resources of other ferroalloys is, by comparison, insignificant. Nickel is of some importance, occurring in other metalliferous ores in Southern Africa.
Most of Africa’s copper is contained in the Central African Copperbelt, stretching across Zambia and into the Katanga (Shaba) area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Accompanying minerals vary with the geologic layer, but cobalt dominates. Outside the Copperbelt a number of countries have lesser but still significant reserves of copper. Only Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Africa contain tin reserves of any significance. Although it is difficult to consider Africa’s reserves of lead and zinc separately, of the two, lead ores are considerably more widespread. North Africa is the largest traditional producing region. African reserves of zinc metal are located along the Moroccan-Algerian frontier, in the Copperbelt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Nigeria, in Zambia, and in Namibia.
Africa has about one-fourth of the world’s reserves of bauxite, the chief aluminum ore. Virtually all of this occurs in a major belt of tropical laterite stretching some 1,200 miles from Guinea to Togo. The largest reserves are in Guinea.
Half of the world reserves of cobalt can be found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A continuation of the geologic formation into Zambia gives the country sizable reserves of cobalt content. The only other deposit of any importance is found in Morocco.
The titanium ores, ilmenite and rutile, are widely distributed in Africa but are rarely considered as minable reserves. A major source is the Sherbro deposit in Sierra Leone. Almost all of Africa’s antimony resources lie in the Murchison Range of South Africa. The major concentrations of beryllium are in Madagascar, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda, and South Africa. The principal sources of cadmium are in Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Deposits of mercury are restricted to North Africa, notably to Tunisia and, more particularly, Algeria.
Gold and allied metals are widely disseminated, reaching their greatest concentrations in South Africa, where reserves of gold probably constitute about half of the world total. Gold is also found in Zimbabwe, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in Ghana. There are numerous alluvial sources of gold in Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, and Gabon. South Africa has the most important deposit of platinum of the world’s market economies. Silver reserves of the continent are not important.
Africa contains a major share of world reserves of tantalum, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo has most of these reserves. African reserves of niobium (columbium; a steel-gray metallic element resembling tantalum in its chemical properties that is used in alloys) are relatively small. Nigeria, however, is an important world producer.
One of Africa’s many sources of zirconium (a metallic element resembling titanium chemically) is the Jos Plateau in Nigeria. Greater reserves, however, are contained in deposits on the Senegal coast; on the east coast of South Africa; in Madagascar; at Sherbro, Sierra Leone; and in the Nile delta.
Another rare metal of which Africa contains a majority of world reserves is germanium, concentrated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Namibia. Africa also has large deposits of lithium, the largest of which are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
3. Nonmetallic deposits
Clays are widespread and are found in North Africa, where brick and pottery clays occur in Algeria and Morocco; in western and central Africa, where clays are located in Togo (ceramic), the Central African Republic, and Côte d’Ivoire (ceramic); and in East and Southern Africa.
Kaolin (china clay) occurs in Algeria. Outside North Africa it is widespread. In western Africa it occurs most notably in Nigeria’s Jos Plateau, as well as in Mali, Ghana, and Guinea. Similar deposits occur in central and East Africa, as well as in Southern Africa.
Bentonite (a clay formed from decomposed volcanic ash, which is able to absorb large quantities of water and to expand to several times its usual size) is found in the Moroccan Atlas Mountains and in Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa. The continent’s principal reserve of fuller’s earth (an absorbent clay) is in Morocco.
Economically important mica deposits occur primarily in Southern Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania) and in Madagascar.
Africa has none of the world’s major reserves of sulfur. It reaches economic concentrations only in South Africa’s Witwatersrand, in Zambia’s Copperbelt, and in Morocco. Large quantities of sodium deposits remain to be evaluated. Sodium chloride is the principal salt, the largest deposit being in the Danakil Plain of Ethiopia. The principal sources of salt in Africa, however, are inland or coastal basins, from which it is extracted by the evaporation of salt water. Major coastal reserves of this type lie along the North African Mediterranean coast and along the Red Sea and Indian Ocean coasts of East Africa and Madagascar. Inland, the chief reserves are in the Oran Sebkha, a salt pan region in Algeria; in Botswana around Lake Makarikari; and in Uganda.
Another important sodium mineral is natron, or sodium carbonate. Natron is more limited in occurrence, but Africa contains several significant deposits. It is found in Lake Magadi, Kenya, and in Lake Natron, Tanzania, as well as in western Africa, where beds have been deposited from the waters of Lake Chad.
North Africa has been a traditional exporter of phosphates, and western Africa has large reserves. Morocco and Western Sahara together have vast reserves. The Río de Oro region in Western Sahara contains huge deposits, and a major development at Bu-Craa has been established. Algeria and Tunisia also have reserves. To the east, phosphate-bearing sediments outcrop on the Red Sea coast. The Thiès deposit in Senegal is of particular interest in constituting the world’s only source of aluminum (as opposed to calcium) phosphate. Other phosphate deposits occur in Togo, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Malawi.
The potash deposits in the Republic of the Congo are the largest in Africa. The other large reserve is in Ethiopia.
Madagascar has the world’s largest known accumulation of flake graphite deposits. Continuations of these high-quality deposits in Mozambique and southeastern Kenya contain further reserves of graphite.
While deposits of low-grade sand suitable for construction and engineering work are widely distributed, reserves of sands with sufficiently high silica content for glass manufacture are more localized. There are deposits in western Africa (Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Nigeria, and Ghana), East Africa (Uganda and Tanzania), and South Africa. Glass sands are also found in Egypt.
Kyanite (cyanite), a mineral aluminum silicate used as a refractory, occurs most typically in Southern Africa. Apart from South African reserves, there are deposits in Kenya, Malawi, Ghana, Cameroon, and Liberia.
Of the abrasive substances, industrial diamonds are most closely associated with Africa. The continent contains some 40 percent of the total world reserves. The stones are found in a number of major belts south of the Sahara. The principal known reserves of diamonds in their primary form are in the South African Vaal belt. Elsewhere in Africa, primary deposits are found in Tanzania, Botswana, and Lesotho.
Another major belt of diamondiferous rocks encircles the Congo River basin and includes the world’s largest deposit, located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which contains the majority of Africa’s reserves of industrial diamonds. The same belt has secondary deposits that occur elsewhere in that country as well as in the Central African Republic and Angola. In western Africa known reserves are located primarily in alluvial gravel fields. They are found in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, and Ghana.
A considerable proportion of the world reserves of corundum (a common mineral, aluminum oxide, notable for its hardness) is located in Southern Africa. The principal deposits are in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, and Malawi.
Pumice is found in areas of volcanic activity such as the Atlantic islands, the coastal Atlas Mountains of northeastern Morocco, and the East African Rift System, notably in Kenya, Tanzania, and Malawi. Joint reserves, however, constitute only a small percentage of the world total.
Reserves of building materials are characterized by their wide distribution, to such an extent that the commercial status of such deposits depends more on their location relative to areas of development than on their extent and quality. While almost all African countries have reserves of building materials, knowledge of such reserves is strictly related to the country’s level of development, and no meaningful estimate of the size of reserves can be made.
Granite is located in Morocco and Nigeria, and there are vast reserves in Burkina Faso. Quartzite (a granular rock, consisting essentially of quartz) is important as a building stone in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Dolerite (a coarse-grained basalt) is produced in South Africa and basalt, which is crushed for use in road construction, in Senegal. Marble is found in Mali, Togo, Nigeria, and South Africa.
Limestone is important because of its use in the cement industry, and deposits are fairly widespread. North Africa is a particularly important source. In western Africa a belt of limestone runs from the Central African Republic to the Atlantic coasts, with major outcrops in northern Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali. Elsewhere there are deposits in Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and Ghana. East African deposits include those in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia; there are also deposits in South Africa.
North Africa has major reserves of gypsum on the Mediterranean coast, as well as in outcrops along the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. Somalia has one of the largest known deposits. Eastern Africa and Madagascar have further reserves, and in western and Southern Africa superficial deposits are particularly important—for instance, north of Nouakchott, Mauritania.
There is no other gem mineral in Africa of comparable importance to these diamond reserves. Deposits of a number of such stones are found, however, especially in Southern and eastern Africa, where diamond fields contain beryl, garnets, amethyst, rose quartz, topaz, opal, jasper, emeralds, and other stones. Madagascar contains a large deposit of garnet. Tourmaline is found in Madagascar and Namibia. Agate is particularly associated with the volcanic areas of eastern and Southern Africa and malachites with the Katanga Copperbelt, while sapphires are found with diamonds in Ghana.
Africa contains no major world deposits of talc, but the mineral is found in Morocco, Nigeria, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Reserves of asbestos are much more important, and Southern Africa has a number of deposits of world significance.
Major deposits of fluorite, or fluorspar (a common mineral, calcium fluoride, used as a flux in metallurgy), are particularly associated with deposits of lead and zinc. In South Africa the chief deposit is in the northeastern part of the country. North African reserves lie primarily in Tunisia and Morocco.
Africa produces a very small share of the world supply of diatomite (a fine siliceous earth, used as an abrasive). The most important deposit is in Kenya.
4. Water resources
In general, the seasonal distribution of river flow in Africa reflects the seasonal rainfall pattern; the amount of groundwater entering the river channels during the dry season is comparatively small. Important modifications in the flow of some rivers are caused by the presence of large lakes and swamps, which act as natural storage reservoirs, by the construction of dams on their courses, and by the incidence and severity of drought.
5. Surface water
Although the surface area of Africa is about one-fifth of Earth’s land surface, the combined annual flow of African rivers is only about 7 percent of the world’s river flow reaching the oceans.
North Africa’s few perennial rivers originate in the mountains of the Maghrib, and their water is used extensively for irrigation. The large number of wadis, or ephemeral watercourses, to be found throughout the Sahara and the eastern Mediterranean coastal lands become filled with water as a result of the rare and erratic storms that occur over mountainous areas; otherwise they remain dry.
From the relatively well-watered areas of western and equatorial Africa, the Sénégal, the Niger, the Logone–Chari, and the Nile rivers flow through the drier inland zones. Of these, the Niger River, originating in the Fouta Djallon region of Guinea, is retarded in the lake and swamp area south of Timbuktu in Mali, and the Logone–Chari feeds Lake Chad.
The Nile, the world’s longest river, receives more than 60 percent of its water from the Ethiopian Plateau, although its source is much farther south in the mountains of Burundi. Since the completion of the Aswan High Dam, only a small proportion of the river’s total flow reaching Egypt enters the Mediterranean Sea.
A number of rivers flowing in a more or less southerly direction into the Atlantic Ocean drain the southern part of western Africa. Many flow rapidly over bedrock before entering the coastal plains, draining into the system of lagoons and creeks along the coast. During the dry season the upper reaches of these rivers are without water, but in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, where the dry season is fairly short, the rivers flow throughout the year.
In the well-watered western part of equatorial Africa the total average annual flow of the Congo River is enormous: some 44 trillion cubic feet. River flow at the lower end of the basin has two maxima: one that corresponds with the rainy season north of the equator, the other with the rainy season that occurs when it is summer in the Southern Hemisphere. The waters in the lower reaches of the river are slightly acid after traversing the large swamps situated in the centre of the basin.
East Africa’s many lakes stretch along the East African Rift Valley from the Red Sea to the mouth of the Zambezi River. Evaporation from most of them exceeds their surface rainfall, and in consequence their outflow is less than the quantities brought in annually by their tributaries. They often govern river flow by acting as storage reservoirs—decreasing the flood flow and increasing the dry-season flow. A number of the rift valley lakes are situated in closed basins and contain high percentages of dissolved salts. The largest of these are Lakes Rudolf (Turkana), Natron, and Eyasi.
Rainfall over much of Southern Africa is small, and the majority of the rivers originating there have an intermittent flow. Some large perennial rivers (e.g., the Okavango, the Zambezi, and the Orange) flow from areas of abundant rainfall into the drier zones.
6. Groundwater
The conditions under which groundwater is found and the quantity and quality of groundwater reserves are closely related to geologic structure. Large inland depressions in Africa’s basement rock, having been filled with sedimentary layers of continental origin, sometimes form important groundwater reservoirs, notably those in the Taoudeni–Niger region, in the central Sahara between the Atlas and Ahaggar mountains; in the Libyan Desert; and in Chad, the Congo basin, the Karoo area of South Africa, and the Kalahari.
The East African plateaus usually contain little or no quantities of groundwater, and aquifers (geologic formations containing water)—generally of local importance—are found only in humid areas where the crystalline rock is weathered or fractured.
The chalky shales (rocks of laminated structure formed by the consolidation of clays) and dolomitic limestones (those containing calcium magnesium carbonate), which sporadically cover the basement rock, may contain important aquifers; those in Zambia and South Africa are major sources of water. In the Sahara a rock stratum called the Continental Intercalary series, which dates from the early Cretaceous Period and which includes the Nubian sandstones of southern Egypt, is the most important water-bearing layer. It extends over very large areas and reaches a thickness of more than 3,000 feet; in Egypt and Algeria it is a major source of artesian water. In Sudan it sometimes lies directly on the Precambrian bedrock and contains underground water layers of local importance. Overlaying the Continental Intercalary series, but generally separated from it by a thick marine deposit, is a younger Tertiary layer called the Continental Terminal, which is the second largest aquifer in this area. Both these layers contain ?fossil? water—i.e., water that entered the layers when rainfall in and around the Sahara was much more abundant than today. Near the surface, aquifers are found in such geologically recent deposits as alluvial deposits and sand dunes.
In the coastal areas of Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, Angola, Mozambique, the East African countries, and Madagascar, aquifers are found in sandstone, limestone, and sand and gravel sediments. Intensive exploitation, however, may result in saltwater intrusions.
The Jurassic limestones of the mountainous area of the Maghrib are much more abundant in water sources than are dolomitic limestones. Around the cape in South Africa, sandstones and limestones contain very little water.
Yields from aquifers with good porosity, such as coastal sedimentary rocks or alluvial deposits, vary from a few cubic feet per hour in the fine-grained sands found in many parts of the continent to 35,000 cubic feet (990 cubic metres) per hour in the coarse gravels of the Nile delta. The capacity of wells in the Continental Terminal is generally somewhat lower, and those in the Continental Intercalary and the Karoo formations can also deliver moderate to high yields.
In North Africa limestones containing many cracks and fissures may yield thousands of cubic feet of water per hour, while in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and South Africa large yields are drawn from dolomitic limestones.
The harder sandstones, sandy shale, and quartzites of Precambrian and Paleozoic age are not generally very porous, and water is obtained only from fractured or weathered deposits. Western African, Angolan, and Tanzanian wells in these formations produce only a few cubic feet per hour. Crystalline and metamorphic rocks are almost impermeable except where fractured or weathered. Volcanic rock, especially the basalts, may yield up to 1,060 cubic feet per hour.
Most of the exploited groundwater is generally fit for consumption, because the dissolved minerals in water from shallow wells, particularly in the sandy aquifers of western Africa, are quite low.
Groundwater from deeper marine layers, however—such as occurs in parts of North Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and South Africa—may have a high content of dissolved salts. In moist tropical countries the water from Precambrian rocks generally contains only small amounts of dissolved minerals, whereas in the volcanic areas of East Africa groundwater may have so high a content of fluorine as to make it unfit for human consumption. There, and elsewhere in Africa, hot (possibly medicinal) springs with high mineral contents occur.
7. Biological resources
Africa’s naturally occurring biological resources—its immensely varied vegetation cover, vast insect life, and diverse animal life—have been described above. When combined with cultivated crops and domestic animals, these resources represent the great bulk of the continent’s economic wealth.
8. Botanical resources
The two most economically important types of vegetation are forests and grasslands. Among the forested areas, the tropical forests contain much of the valuable timber. The vast equatorial lowland rainforest has the greatest variety of tree species, but the species most commercially in demand are found in the zones of broad-leaved woodlands and tropical highland forests. The true value of the forested areas, however, cannot be ascertained exactly, as original forests are progressively being converted to farming areas, and few governments have undertaken comprehensive land-use surveys to determine their present extent.
9. Animal resources
Africa has a large quantity of natural resources including oil, diamonds, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver, petroleum and cocoa beans, but also woods and tropical fruits. Much of its natural resources are undiscovered or barely harnessed. Having a low human density, for a long period of time Africa has been colonized by more dynamic groups, exploiting African resources. Some economists] have talked about the 'scourge of raw materials', large quantities of rare raw materials putting Africa under heavy pressures and tensions, leading to wars and slow development. Despite these abundance of natural resources, claims suggest that many Western nations like the United States, Canada, France and the United Kingdom as well as emerging economic powerhouses like China often exploit Africa's natural resources today, causing most of the value and money from the natural resources to go to the West and East Asia rather than Africa, further causing the poverty in Africa. African oil takes growing importance, mainly after the 2003 oil crisis and recent oil reserves discoveries. Sudan and Nigeria are two of the main oil producers. China owns 40% of Sudan's oil production. Oil is provided by both continental and offshore productions. Sudan's oil exports in 2010 are estimated by the United States Department of State at $9 billion with United States dollars.
Five countries dominate Africa's upstream oil production. Together they account for 85% of the continent's oil production and are, in order of decreasing output, Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Egypt and Angola. Other oil producing countries are Gabon, Congo, Cameroon, Tunisia, Equatorial Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Côte d'Ivoire. Exploration is taking place in a number of other countries that aim to increase their output or become first time producers. Included in this list are Chad, Sudan, Namibia, South Africa and Madagascar while Mozambique and Tanzania are potential oil producers
francis1897 answered the question on January 12, 2023 at 06:46