Africa Vocab

savanna

• pen grassland with scattered trees

• large area

• desert

sahel

• West Africa's semi-desert vegetation zone

• sub-Saharan Africa

sub-Saharan Africa

• Africa south of the Sahara Desert

• Spoken record of past events

oral history

• Spoken record of past events

• books and poems

griots

• west african storytellers

• merchants

polytheism

• belief in more than one god

• belief in one god

surplus

• an excess supply of something

• timbuktu library

mansa musa

• egyptian emperor

• one of Mali's most famous leaders who made Timbuktu into an important city

rainforests

• moist, densely wooded areas

• sahara

• sahel

rifts

• plateaus

• long, deep valleys formed by the movement of the earth's crust