page_title: Sub-Saharan Africa
hierarchical_section_title: Sub-Saharan Africa
caption_attribution_description: Dark and light green: Definition of "Sub-Saharan Africa" as used in the statistics of many the UN institutions. Light green: However, Sudan is also classified as North Africa by the United Nations.
context_page_description: Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically and ethnoculturally, the area of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. According to the United Nations, it consists of all African countries and territories that are fully or partially located south of the Sahara. While the United Nations geoscheme for Africa excludes Sudan from its definition of sub-Saharan Africa, the African Union's definition includes Sudan but instead excludes Mauritania.
  It contrasts with North Africa, whose countries are part of the League of Arab states within the Arab world. The states of Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros and the Arabic-speaking Mauritania and Sudan are, however, geographically in sub-Saharan Africa, although they are members of the Arab League as well. The UN Development Program lists 46 of Africa's 54 countries as "sub-Saharan", excluding Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan and Tunisia.
  The term has been criticized by late Professor Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, on Pambazuka as being a racist word because it refers to the area south of the Sahara by geographical conventions.
context_section_description: Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically and ethnoculturally, the area of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara.  According to the United Nations, it consists of all African countries and territories that are fully or partially located south of the Sahara. While the United Nations geoscheme for Africa excludes Sudan from its definition of sub-Saharan Africa, the African Union's definition includes Sudan but instead excludes Mauritania.
  It contrasts with North Africa, whose countries are part of the League of Arab states within the Arab world. The states of Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros and the Arabic-speaking Mauritania and Sudan are, however, geographically in sub-Saharan Africa, although they are members of the Arab League as well. The UN Development Program lists 46 of Africa's 54 countries as "sub-Saharan", excluding Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan and Tunisia.
  The term has been criticized by late Professor Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, on Pambazuka as being a racist word because it refers to the area south of the Sahara by geographical conventions (as opposed to North Africa, which refers to a cardinal direction). Critics such as Professor Ekwe-Ekwe consider 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 they see as a linguistic vestige of European colonialism.
  Since probably 3500 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 interrupted by only the Nile in Sudan, though the Nile was blocked by the river's cataracts. The Sahara pump theory explains how flora and fauna (including Homo sapiens) left Africa to penetrate the Middle East and beyond. African pluvial periods are associated with a Wet Sahara phase, during which larger lakes and more rivers existed.
caption: Dark and lighter green: Definition of "sub-Saharan Africa" as used in the statistics of the United Nations institutions.
  Lighter green: However, Sudan is classified as Northern Africa by the United Nations Statistics Division,[1] though the organisation states "the assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories".
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