At the end of the 19th century, France began to develop Niger. In 1899 a military expedition was sent from the Niger River to Lake Chad. In 1904, the French founded the "military territory of Niger" in the colony of Upper Senegal-Niger, which in turn was part of French West Africa. In 1905-06, Muslim preachers and local sultans tried to provide armed resistance to the French. Since the 1920s, French colonizers actively introduced in Niger the cultivation of various crops, intensively developed infrastructure (primarily the road network) and recruited residents to work in industrial enterprises in other, coastal colonies in French West Africa.
In 1946, Niger received the status of an overseas territory within the French Union. An elected General Council, a local government body, was established. Mainly, the seats in it were occupied by chiefs of local tribes.
Kalahari Desert
Kalahari is a desert in South Africa within Botswana, South Africa, and Zambia. Recently, due to the increase in area, it has been invading Angola, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. The area of Kalahari is about 600 thousand km². The climate of Kalahari is arid with a summer maximum of precipitation and mild winters, and the aridity increases to the south-east. Precipitation (up to 500 mm) is timed to coincide with the summer period (November-April), but its magnitude varies considerably both in time and area. Kalahari is one of the hottest areas in South Africa. The average maximum temperature is 29 degrees Celsius, while the average temperature is 12 degrees Celsius, evaporability is 3,000 mm.
The capital of Kalahari is Ganzi, a city in western Botswana.
Central Kalahari
National Hunting Reserve in Botswana in the Kalahari Desert. It was opened in 1962 and covers an area of 52,800 km², making it the largest nature reserve in Botswana and the second largest in the world. The park is home to a large number of wildlife species: giraffes, leopards, lions, wild dogs, cheetahs, African warthogs, hyenas, blue wildebeests, canes, sulfur bulls, antelope, kudu, etc.
The relief of the reserve is mostly a failure of the plain with small wavy hills covered with bushes and grass covering the dunes. Large trees grow in the park.
Most of the river valleys in the Central Kalahari Nature Reserve are dry, with salt pits. The park's territory is crossed by the channels of four dried up rivers, which are smoothly curved. One of them, the Deception Valley, began to form about 16,000 years ago. It got its name from mirages, which make it seem that there is water in the dried up rivers and lakes. Bushmen tribes inhabited the territory of the modern reserve for several thousand years. However, in the mid-1990s, the Botswana government attempted to relocate the nomads, explaining that their stay in the park caused great economic damage (despite the increasing number of tourists).
In 1997, three-quarters of all Bushmen were evicted to temporary camps outside the reserve; in October 2005, the Government used force to relocate the remaining people. The park is now home to 250 nomads. In mid-September 2008, a major fire destroyed most of the reserve. The cause of the fire remained unclear.
The Namib Desert
Namib is a coastal desert in southwestern Africa. The name of the desert comes from the indigenous language of the Nama people. The area of Namibia is over 100,000 km². The desert stretches for 1900 km along the Atlantic coast from the city of Namibe in Angola, through all of Zambia (which received its name from the desert) to the mouth of the Oliphants River in the Cape Province of South Africa. From the ocean, it extends inland from 50 to 160 km to the foot of the inland plateau; in the south, it connects with the southwestern part of the Kalahari.
The name "Namibia" in the language of the Nama people means "a place where there is nothing". The Namib desert is extremely dry (only 10-13 mm of rainfall per year) and, except a few coastal towns, almost uninhabited.
Namibia is considered to be the oldest desert in the world: desert or semi-desert conditions have been in existence for 80 million years, i.e. the desert dates back to the time of the dinosaurs.
As a result, several endemic species of plants and animals (e.g. the blackbell beetles of lats, Syntyphlus subterraneous) have emerged here, which are adapted to live in the local extremely hostile climate and are not found anywhere else in the world.