Africa Physical Map
A free printable physical map of Africa, with elevation shown in color and shaded relief. The labeled version names the mountain ranges, deserts, plains, rivers, seas and highest peaks. The blank version leaves them off for students to fill in.
Highest Point
Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
19,341 ft
Lowest Point
Lake Assal, Djibouti
about 509 ft below sea level
Choose your version
Labeled or blank.
Both are free PDFs sized for US Letter paper.
Labeled
Ranges, deserts, plains, rivers, lakes, seas and the highest peaks, all named. Use it as a reference or an answer key.
downloadLabeled PDF
Blank
The same terrain with no names and a name line at the top, for students to label the features themselves.
downloadBlank PDFThe physical geography of Africa
Most of Africa is a high plateau that drops steeply to narrow coastal plains. The Sahara, the largest hot desert in the world, covers the north, with the Atlas Mountains along its northwest edge. South of the Sahara is the Sahel, a belt of dry grassland. The Congo Basin in the center holds the continent’s great rainforest. The east is the highest part of Africa: the Ethiopian Highlands and the Great Rift Valley, with long, deep lakes and volcanoes such as Kilimanjaro. The Kalahari and Namib deserts lie in the south.
Major rivers
- Nile
- Congo
- Niger
- Zambezi
- Orange
Find it on the map
- The Sahara stretching across the whole north
- The chain of long lakes in the Great Rift Valley
- Madagascar off the southeast coast
Built from real data, not stock images.
The terrain is drawn from a global elevation model (Mapzen terrain tiles, built from NASA SRTM and other public surveys). Coastlines, rivers, lakes and feature names come from Natural Earth. All eight of our US, continent and world physical maps use the same elevation colors, so they can be compared with each other.
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