The eastern African coastal landscape

Abstract

Eastern Africa's 'Swahili coast' is conventionally considered to extend from around Mogadishu in the north, to either Cape Delgado near the modern Mozambique-Tanzania border or Sofala in southern Mozambique and to include near-shore islands and archipelagos the Comoros Islands, and sections of northwest Madagascar. As a geographical entity, the eastern African coast extends beyond Mogadishu up to Cape Guardafui and the island of Socotra, although in the contemporary political geography of the Indian Ocean the latter is considered to be part of Asia. The spatial diversity exhibited along the coast in terms of natural resource distributions, surface and shoreline topography, and offshore bathymetry likewise would have both constrained and enabled human activities differentially according to the setting. The natural vegetation of the eastern African seaboard is dominated by a comparatively narrow belt of coastal forest, the northern limits of which lie in southern Somalia, where it merges with grassy, semi-arid to arid steppe vegetation.