Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa
Geographical map of sub-Saharan Africa   The Sahara   The Sahel   Sub-Saharan Africa
Largest cities	10 largest cities in sub-Saharan Africa 1. Kinshasa 2. Lagos 3. Luanda 4. Dar es Salaam 5. Johannesburg 6. Abidjan 7. Addis Ababa 8. Nairobi 9. Cape Town 10. Yaoundé
Population  (2021)
• Total	1,137,938,708
Demonyms	Sub-Saharan African
Religions (2020)
• Christianity	62.0%
• Islam	32.8%
• No religion	2.6%
• Other	2.5%
• Hinduism	0.1%
Countries	49 countries Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Comoros Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Djibouti Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Eswatini Ethiopia Gabon Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Ivory Coast Kenya Lesotho Liberia Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritania Mauritius Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Rwanda São Tomé and Príncipe Senegal Seychelles Sierra Leone Somalia South Africa South Sudan Sudan Tanzania Togo Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe
Languages	Over 1,000 languages
Internet TLD	.africa

Combined green: Definition of "sub-Saharan Africa" as used in the statistics of United Nations institutions
Lighter green: Sudan, classified as a part of North Africa by the United Nations Statistics Division instead of Eastern Africa, though the organization states that "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."

Red: Arab states in Africa (Arab League and UNESCO)

Simplified climatic map of Africa: sub-Saharan Africa consists of the Sahel and the Horn of Africa in the north (yellow), the tropical savannas (light green) and the tropical rainforests (dark green) of Equatorial Africa, and the arid Kalahari Basin (yellow) and the "Mediterranean" south coast (olive) of Southern Africa. The numbers shown correspond to the dates of all Iron Age artifacts associated with the Bantu expansion.

The distribution of religions in Africa.

Simplified map of Africa's major population groups from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, depicting the spread of Bantu peoples ("Blacks") across much of sub-Saharan Africa and other ethnic groups, such as Berbers/Copts ("whites"), Pygmy peoples, the Khoisan, and Austronesian peoples ("Indonesians"). The map's racial categories and title have been widely criticised as outdated and echoing colonial-era classifications.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the areas and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the African countries and territories that are situated fully in that specified region, the term may also include polities that only have part of their territory located in that region, per the definition of the United Nations (UN). This is considered a non-standardised geographical region with the number of countries included varying from 46 to 48 depending on the organisation describing the region (e.g. UN, WHO, World Bank, etc.). The African Union (AU) uses a different regional breakdown, recognising all 55 member states on the continent—grouping them into five distinct and standard regions.

The term serves as a grouping counterpart to North Africa, which is instead grouped with the definition of MENA (i.e. Middle East and North Africa) as it is part of the Arab world, and most North African states are likewise members of both the Arab League and the AU. However, while they are also member states of the Arab League, the Comoros, Djibouti, Mauritania, and Somalia (and sometimes Sudan) are all geographically considered to be part of sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, the UN Development Programme applies the "sub-Saharan" classification to 46 of Africa's 55 countries, excluding Djibouti, SADR, Somalia, and Sudan.

Since around 3900 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 that is interrupted only by the Nile in Sudan, though navigation on the Nile was blocked by the Sudd and the river's cataracts. The Sahara pump theory explains how flora and fauna (including Homo sapiens) left Africa to penetrate Eurasia and beyond. African pluvial periods are associated with a "Wet Sahara" phase, during which larger lakes and more rivers existed.