| Nile River | the world's longest river, flowing over 4,000 miles through the Sudan Basin into Uganda, Sudan, and Egypt |
| rift valleys | a long, thin valley created by the moving apart of the continental plates, present in East Africa, stretching over 4,000 miles from Jordan in Southwest Asia to Mozambique in Southern Africa |
| Mount Kilimanjaro | a dormoned volcano in Tanzania, Africa, also Africa's highest peak |
| escarpment | a steep slope with a nearly flat plateau on top |
| aquifer | an underground layer of rock that stores water |
| Aswan High Dam | a dam on the Nile River in Egypt, completed in 1970, which increased Egypt's farmable land by 50% and protected it from droughts and floods |
| silt | loose sedimentary material containing very small rock particles, formed by river deposits and very fertile |
| Olduva Gorge | a site of fossil beds in northern Tanzania, containing the most continuous known record of humanity over the past 2 millions years, including fossils from 65 hominids |
| Aksum | an important trading capital from the first to the eighth centures A.D. in what is now Ethiopia; it flourished due to its location near the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean |
| Berlin Conference | a conference of 14 European nations held in 1884-1885 in Berlin, Germany, to establish rules for political control of Africa |
| cash crops | a crop grown for direct sale, and not for use in a region, such as coffee, tea, sugar, and tobacco in Africa |
| pandemic | a disease affecting a large population over a wide geographic area |
| Islam | a monotheistic religion based on the teachings of the prophet Muhammad, and the biggest cultural and religious influence in North Africa |
| souks | marketplaces in North Africa |
| rai | a kind of popular Algerian music developed in the 1920s by poor urban children that is fast paced with danceable rhythms; was sometimes used as a form of rebellion to expose political unhappiness |
| King Leopold II | the Belgian king who opened up the African interior to European trade along the Congo River and by 1884 controlled the area known as the Congo Free State |
| Mobutu Sese Seko | the leaders or Zaire, which is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from its independence in the 1960s until 1997. He brought the country's business under national control, profited from the reogranization, and used the army to hold power |
| Great Zimbabwe | a city established in what is now Zimbabwe by the Shona around 1000; it became the capital of a thriving gold-trading area |
| Mutapa Empire | a state founded in the 15th century by a man name Mutota and that extended throughout all of present-day Zimbabwe except the eastern part |
| Apartheid | a policy of complete separation of the races, instituted by the white minority government of South Africa in 1948 |
| Nelson Mandela | one of the leaders of the African National Congress who led a struggle to end apartheid and was elected president in 1994 in the first all-race election in South Africa |
| brain drain | i know what this means, but can't really define it |
| AIDS | a disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV |
| cholera | a treatable infectious disease that can be fatal and is caused by a lack of adequate sanitation and a clean water supply |
| malaria | an infectious disease of the red blood cells, carrie dby mosquitoes, that is characterized by chills, fever, and sweating |
| tuberculosis | a respiratory infection spread by human contact, which often accompanies AIDS (bacterial infection) |
| Golan Heights | a hilly plateau overlooking the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee; a strategic location that has been the site of conflict in Southwest Asia for decades |
| Tigris river | one of the most important rivers of Southwest Asia; it supported several ancient river valley civilizations and flows through parts of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq |
| Euphrates river | a river of Southwest Asia, which supported several ancient civilizations and flows though parts of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq and empties into the Persian Gulf |
| wadi | a riverbed that remains dry except during the rainy seasons |
| Jordan River | a river that serves a s anatural boundary between israel and Jordan, flowing from the mountains of Lebanon with no outlet to the Mediterranean Sea |
| Dead Sea | a landlocked salt lake between Israel and Jordan that is so salty that almost nothing can live in its waters; it is 1,349 feet below sea level, making it the lowest place on the exposed crust of the earth |
| Rub al-Khali | also known as the Empty Quarter; one of the largest sandy deserts in the world, covering about 250,000 square miles; located on the Arabian Peninsula |
| salt flat | flat land made of chemical salts that remain after winds evaporate the moisture in the soil |
| desalinization | the removal of salt from ocean water |
