Geography of Africa and Europe: Relief, Rivers and Resources

The correct answer is B, Mount Kilimanjaro, which rises to 5,895 metres in Tanzania and is a dormant volcano, not part of a fold range. Its highest summit is Kibo, also called Uhuru peak, and it stands close to the Equator yet carries snow and shrinking glaciers, a favourite illustration of climate changing with altitude. A is wrong because Mount Kenya, 5,199 metres, is the second highest peak of the continent, also volcanic. C is wrong because Mount Cameroon in West Africa is an active volcano of about four thousand metres, well below Kilimanjaro. D is wrong because Ras Dashen is the highest point of the Ethiopian Highlands, which are called the roof of Africa but do not hold the continent's highest peak. The pair to fix in memory is Kilimanjaro and Tanzania.

The correct answer is C, the Congo, also called the Zaire. Its enormous basin lies on both sides of the Equator, so the river cuts the line twice before reaching the Atlantic. It is also the deepest river in the world and has the largest drainage basin in Africa, which keeps its flow steady through the year because rain falls in one half of the basin while the other is drier. A is wrong because the Nile, the longest river of Africa, flows northward from Lake Victoria and Lake Tana and crosses the Equator only once near its source region. B is wrong because the Niger lies entirely north of the Equator and makes its famous inland delta in Mali. D is wrong because the Zambezi, the river of the Victoria Falls, flows well to the south of the Equator.

The correct answer is B, the Zambezi. The Victoria Falls lie on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, where the Zambezi drops into a narrow basalt gorge; the local name Mosi-oa-Tunya means the smoke that thunders. A is wrong because the Nile has no waterfall of this class; its course is broken by a series of cataracts in Sudan and Egypt, and the examiner's trap here is to link the name Victoria with the Nile through Lake Victoria, which does feed the White Nile. C is wrong because the Orange river of South Africa carries the Augrabies Falls, a different and much smaller feature. D is wrong because the Limpopo, which crosses the Tropic of Capricorn twice, has no major fall. Keep the two Victorias apart: the lake belongs to the Nile and the falls to the Zambezi.

The correct answer is C, the Sahara, which stretches about nine million square kilometres across North Africa from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and is the largest hot desert on earth. The Bedouin are its best known nomadic people, and oases such as those of the Nile and the Fezzan support its settled life. A is wrong because the Kalahari in southern Africa is far smaller and is the home of the Bushmen or San. B is wrong because the Gobi, on the China and Mongolia border, is a cold desert of the mid-latitudes, cut off from rain by distance from the sea. D is wrong because the Atacama in Chile, though the driest desert in the world, is small in area and owes its dryness to the cold Peru current and the rain shadow of the Andes. Note that the largest desert of any kind is Antarctica, a cold desert.

The correct answer is C, Lake Tanganyika, a long narrow lake in the western arm of the Great Rift Valley and the second deepest lake in the world after Baikal in Siberia. Its shape and depth come from the rift: the floor between two parallel faults sank, giving a trough rather than a shallow basin. A is wrong because Lake Victoria, although the largest lake of Africa by area, lies in a shallow saucer between the two arms of the rift and is nowhere near as deep. B is wrong because Lake Chad is a shallow inland lake on the southern edge of the Sahara which has shrunk greatly in recent decades. D is wrong because Lake Nyasa, also called Lake Malawi, is a deep rift lake too but comes after Tanganyika. Remember Victoria for area and Tanganyika for depth.

The correct answer is A, the Jordan valley in West Asia. The Great Rift Valley runs for about six thousand kilometres from the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea, down the Red Sea, through Ethiopia and the lake region of East Africa to Mozambique, and it is the largest rift on the continents, formed where the crust is being pulled apart. B is wrong because the Atlas mountains were formed by compression, not rifting, and lie far to the north-west. C is wrong because the Niger delta is a depositional feature on the Atlantic coast with no connection to the rift. D is wrong because the Cape of Good Hope is a headland at the south-western tip of Africa, and the southernmost point of the continent is Cape Agulhas, not the Cape of Good Hope.

The correct answer is B, Mount Elbrus, 5,642 metres, a dormant volcano in the Caucasus range in Russia and the highest point of the continent. A is wrong because Mont Blanc, about 4,808 metres, in the Alps on the France and Italy border, is the highest peak of western Europe only; this is the single commonest error in the topic, because many older books treat the Caucasus as Asian. C is wrong because the Matterhorn, on the Switzerland and Italy border, is famous for its pyramid shape carved by glaciers but is lower than Mont Blanc. D is wrong because Mount Etna in Sicily is the most active volcano of Europe at a little over three thousand metres. Read the stem carefully: Europe takes Elbrus, western Europe takes Mont Blanc.

The correct answer is C, the Caspian Sea. The Volga, about 3,530 kilometres long, is the longest river of Europe and flows entirely within Russia to end in the Caspian, which is a landlocked salt lake and the largest lake in the world, so the Volga never reaches an ocean. A canal joins it to the Don and so to the Black Sea for navigation. A is wrong because the Don, the Dnieper and the Danube flow into the Black Sea. B is wrong because the rivers of the Baltic drainage include the Vistula, the Oder and the Neva. D is wrong because the Rhine, the Elbe and the Thames belong to the North Sea drainage, with Rotterdam at the Rhine mouth as Europe's largest port. The Volga and the Caspian form one of the most repeated pairs in world geography.

The correct answer is B, the Danube, which rises in the Black Forest of Germany and flows through ten countries before forming its delta on the Black Sea in Romania, more than any other river in the world. It also passes more capital cities than any other river, among them Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade. A is wrong because the Rhine, though the busiest inland waterway of Europe, touches far fewer countries on its way from the Alps to the North Sea. C is wrong because the Nile basin is shared by many states but the main river itself runs through a much smaller number on its course to Egypt. D is wrong because the Amazon, the largest river in the world by volume, flows mainly through Brazil after rising in Peru.

The correct answer is C, the Urals. The Ural mountains, an old worn range running north to south across Russia, together with the Ural river, the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, form the conventional boundary between Europe and Asia, which is why the two are often treated as one land mass called Eurasia. A is wrong because the Alps are young fold mountains within Europe, dividing Italy from France, Switzerland and Austria, and holding Mont Blanc. B is wrong because the Pyrenees separate France from Spain and shelter the small state of Andorra. D is wrong because the Apennines run the length of the Italian peninsula. Only the Urals serve as a continental boundary, and they are also rich in iron, coal and other minerals.

The correct answer is A, the savanna of Kenya and Tanzania. The Masai are a cattle-keeping people of the East African savanna, moving their herds with the seasonal rains; their life is the standard textbook example of pastoral nomadism in the tropical grasslands. B is wrong because the people of the Congo rainforest named in textbooks are the Pygmies or Bambuti, who live by hunting and gathering. C is wrong because the Kalahari is the home of the Bushmen or San, also hunters and gatherers, who are famous for tracking and for finding water in a dry land. D is wrong because the steppes of Ukraine are a wheat growing belt of commercial farming, not the home of a named pastoral tribe in the exam syllabus. Match each people with its biome.