Describe the African Coastline

Compared to other Continents like North America, Europe, Asia Africa’s
Coastline has a smooth outline in nature and fairly a short Coast in length.
But in few places it is broken by some rivers estuaries with limited deep inlets
(J.M. Pritchard 1979; W.J. Minns 1984).
It is noted that the African Continent has been uplifted, therefore there are few
extensive or wide Coastal low-plains.
The nature of the African Continental shelf is considerably shallow and slopes
gently towards east, west, south mainly.
Such a Coastal nature affects the formation of adequate and proper natural
harbours which are not many in the Africa’s Coastline W.J. Minns, 1984).
However, there are few Africa’s Coastlines that are not completely smooth ones
such as the West African Coast which has a number of gaps and marks with the sea
stretching further inland where rivers here seems to be greatly deep.
There are notable African Coastlines such as the low-plains of Mozambique,
northern and northeast Kenya, southern Somalia, Senegal, Mauritania and few others.
The surface nature along the African Coast do range from high cliffs in the north
and south to sand bars, lagoons of the west and the eastern coral reefs.
In some places mangrove swamps change with drowned river’s valleys.
Along some Coasts are found old beaches that stand in a raised form high above the usual
shoreline, indicating the previous higher sea level.
The African continental shelf is a little wider in the Gulf of Gabes (East of
Tunisia).
The depths here are less than 200m, extending up to about 400km from the shores
and up to about 249km out from the South African coast on the Aghulas Banks (at times
C. Agulhas – the South most point of Africa, at 20 L.E.)
In general the African Continental shelf is comparatively narrow. It has less than
50km, but some places like off Natal, Angola, etc., the Coastal zones do not exceed 5km
wide.
The total length of the African Cost is about 27,000km, which is a half of the
Asian Continent Coastline.
The African Coasts are usually low and sandy, with few good natural harbours, as
indicated earlier.
But where down warping or local faulting and sinking has taken place, then there
are productions of deep inlets like that of Freetown in Sierra Leone and Mombasa in
Kenya. Deep river estuaries are usually few, but only rivers Gambia and Congo can be
cited as outstanding examples of Africa.
Some of them include:
(a) Work of waves.
(b) Tidal currents
(c) Land’s height along the Coast
(d) Geological formation or nature of the rocks along the Coast
(e) Relative sea level movement effect – if any.
(f) Regional Climatic Conditions/Regimes
(g) Effect of human activities along Coasts

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Titany answered the question on January 17, 2022 at 12:16