Geography entrance exam, 2015 E.C. (2023)

Africa lies almost entirely inside the tropics, so the winds that reach it for most of the year are the trade winds. They blow out of the subtropical high pressure belts towards the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone, the northeast trades in the north and the southeast trades in the south, and their advance and retreat set the wet and dry seasons.

The westerly winds only touch the far northern and far southern tips of the continent in winter, and the polar easterlies never reach Africa at all.

Textbook: Geography Grade 10, Unit 2 Climate of Africa, section 2.2 Climate types and zones of Africa.

The Sahara lies north of the equator. From June to August the overhead sun is near the Tropic of Cancer, so the whole of northern Africa, the Sahara included, has its hottest months. Clear skies and dry air push daytime readings above 40 degrees Celsius.

Option B reverses the seasons: the sun is overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn in December, and that is when northern Africa is at its coolest.

Note that option C is damaged in this copy. A sentence belonging to another question has been pasted into it, but this does not affect the answer.

Textbook: Geography Grade 10, Unit 2 Climate of Africa, section 2.2 Climate types and zones of Africa.

The warm temperate continental region lies in the interior of southern Africa, between the Drakensberg mountains and the Kalahari desert. Because it is far inland, the winds that reach it have already lost their moisture, so rainfall averages only about 700 mm a year and temperature swings from about 26 degrees Celsius in summer to about 10 degrees Celsius in winter.

Option B therefore fails, because rainfall here is low rather than high, and option A fails because the tropical wet and dry (savanna) region is the one covering close to half of Africa.

Take care with option D as printed. The textbook places this region in the interior of southern Africa, not the north, so read the option as the southern interior. It is still the only choice that points at the right part of the continent.

Textbook: Geography Grade 10, Unit 2 Climate of Africa, section 2.2 Climate types and zones of Africa (page 33).

The belt just north of the wetter tropics is the Sahel and the Sudan zone. Rain falls there only when the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone pushes far enough north, so a late or weak advance leaves the whole year dry. Grade 12 names the Sahelian and Sudanese ecosystems as the areas most often hit by drought in Africa.

Central Africa is the tempting choice, but it sits under the equatorial rain belt and receives rain through most of the year.

Textbook: Geography Grade 12, Unit 7 Contemporary global geographic issues and concerns, section 7.3 Drought (page 200).

The Mediterranean Sea drainage system of Africa is fed by a single great river, the Nile. It rises near the equator, crosses the Sahara and flows north for about 6,650 km before reaching the sea.

The Atlantic Ocean system carries several large rivers, among them the Congo, the Niger, the Senegal and the Orange, so it cannot be the system with only one major river.

Textbook: Geography Grade 10, Unit 3 Natural resource base of Africa, section 3.2 Major drainage and water resources in Africa.

Lake Victoria fills a shallow basin that was warped downward between the western and the eastern branches of the East African Rift. That is why it is wide and shallow instead of long, narrow and very deep like a true rift lake.

Tanganyika and Kivu lie in the western branch and Turkana in the eastern branch, so all three of them are rift valley lakes.

Textbook: Geography Grade 10, Unit 3 Natural resource base of Africa, section 3.2 Major drainage and water resources in Africa.