HORN OF AFRICA

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The Horn of Africa (HoA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region in East Africa. Located on the easternmost part of the African mainland, it is the fourth largest peninsula in the world. It is composed of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti; broader definitions also include parts or all of Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, and Uganda. The term Greater Horn Region (GHR) can additionally include Burundi , Rwanda, and Tanzania (the cradle of life). It lies along the southern boundary of the Red Sea and extends hundreds of kilometres into the Guardafui Channel, Gulf of Aden, and Indian Ocean and shares a maritime border with the Arabian Peninsula of Western Asia.

The Horn of Africa is almost equidistant from the equator and the Tropic of Cancer. It consists chiefly of mountains uplifted through the formation of the Great Rift Valley, a fissure in the Earth's crust extending from Turkey to Mozambique and marking the separation of the African and Arabian tectonic plates. Mostly mountainous, the region arose through faults resulting from the Rift Valley.

Geologically, the Horn and Yemen once formed a single landmass around 18 million years ago, before the Gulf of Aden rifted and separated the Horn region from the Arabian Peninsula. The Somali Plate is bounded on the west by the East African Rift, which stretches south from the triple junction in the Afar Depression, and an undersea continuation of the rift extending southward offshore. The northern boundary is the Aden Ridge along the coast of Saudi Arabia. The eastern boundary is the Central Indian Ridge, the northern portion of which is also known as the Carlsberg Ridge. The southern boundary is the Southwest Indian Ridge.

Extensive glaciers once covered the Simien and Bale Mountains but melted at the beginning of the Holocene. The mountains descend in a huge escarpment to the Red Sea and more steadily to the Indian Ocean. Socotra is a small island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia. Its size is 3,600 km2 (1,390 sq mi) and it is a territory of Yemen.

The lowlands of the Horn are generally arid in spite of their proximity to the equator. This is because the winds of the tropical monsoons that give seasonal rains to the Sahel and the Sudan blow from the west. Consequently, they lose their moisture before reaching Djibouti and northern part of Somalia, with the result that most of the Horn receives little rainfall during the monsoon season. 

OCEAN AWARENESS CAMPAIGN - As part of the Cleaner Ocean Foundation's ocean literacy campaign, we are developing a game that can be played on mobile devices like the iphone or android smart phones. In this game children learn a little about geography as they select one of five ocean areas to rid of marine litter. The screen above shows that the player has selected the Southern Ocean to tackle. Copyright Map © January 29 2018 all rights reserved COF Ltd. Copyright Maps © January 29 2018 all rights reserved COF Ltd.

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