Geography & Trade
Map
East Africa
East Africa can be defined by geography or culture, but the United Nations usually includes the following 19 countries: Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mozambique, Reunion, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Mapping by Memory
Play a game of “find that country”. Draw a rough map that outlines the countries of East Africa on the blackboard. Don’t fill in the country names. Break the class into two groups and clear desks to the side of the room. Whenever you call out a country name a representative from each group has to run up to the board and put an X in the country that they think is correct. The fastest and most accurate team wins.
East Africa is famous for its game reserves like the Serengeti and the Maasai Mara. Every year, millions of tourists visit the region, each adventurer hoping for a glimpse of the famous “big five”: elephants, lions, rhinoceroses, leopards and buffalo.
The “big five” aren’t the only big things in East Africa—the region is home to many of the continent’s largest features. Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya are the biggest mountains, Madagascar is the biggest island, Lake Victoria is the largest lake and flowing from it is the Nile, the longest river in the world. On top of all that there is the Sahara, the world’s biggest desert at almost the same size as the United States.
Geography Facts
Here are some other interesting things about the geography of East Africa:
- East Africa is home to the Great Rift Valley, where remains of some of the earliest humans have been found.
- Madagascar, the largest island in Africa, is home to many animals that you can’t find anywhere else in the world, including lemurs.
One of the main languages in East Africa, Swahili (also called Kiswahili), dates back to the region’s period of trade with Arab merchants. During this time, local Africans became the brokers between the Arab merchants and African traders from the interior. Swahili developed so that everyone could understand each other. In the beginning, ivory, gold and spices were the primary goods traded.
Out of East Africa and Into the Classroom
Before the invention of money, everything was traded for everything else and you had to bargain in order to get the deal you wanted. Have your students think about trade in East Africa by asking them to bring in three items that they like but that they’d be willing to trade for something else, maybe a good book or a deck of cards. Set up a trader’s market in your classroom—play some East African music and have them greet each other with Swahili words from the student websites.
By the mid-1400s a darker trade took over in East Africa: the slave trade. The island of Zanzibar, once known for its exotic spices, soon became a port for East Africa’s slave trade. The sale of slaves persisted until the Zanzibar slave market was shut down in 1873.
In East Africa, like everywhere else in the world, geography and trade are connected. While the past has witnessed the tragedy of the slave trade, present-day trade includes everything from fresh-cut flowers (Kenya is the largest supplier of these to Europe) to coffee, tea and sugar.
In addition to rural areas with high rates of poverty, East Africa also has thriving and wealthy urban centers with shopping malls and modern houses just like we do in North America.
The urban geography is another important aspect of life in East Africa. In addition to rural areas with high rates of poverty, East Africa also has thriving and wealthy urban centers with shopping malls and modern houses just like we do in North America. Developed cities like Nairobi and Arusha are two examples.