Africa

West

is composed of eighteen countries occupying various climate zones. The coastal region from Guinea-Bissau to Cameroon is characterized by abundant rainfall (with a rainy season of at least six months) and a thick forest of massive evergreen trees. A drier region, the savanna, lies five hundred miles north of the forest, and receives enough rainfall to sustain vast areas of rarer trees and grasses. The semiarid zone between the Sahara Desert to the north and the savanna to the south is called the Sahel, which in some years has a dry season of over nine months. North of the Sahel lies the Sahara Desert.