The Masai are a pastoral people of which region?

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.