Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area of the continent of Africa that

lies south of the Sahara. According to the United Nations, it consists of all
African countries that are fully or partially located south of the Sahara.[2] It
contrasts with North Africa, whose territories are part of the League of Arab
states within the Arab world. The states of Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros and the
Arabic speaking Mauritania are however geographically in sub-Saharan Africa,
although they are members of the Arab League as well.[3] The UN Development Program
lists 46 of Africa�s 54 countries as �sub-Saharan,� excluding Algeria, Djibouti,
Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan and Tunisia.[4]

The Sahel is the transitional zone in between the Sahara and the tropical savanna
of the Sudan region and farther south the forest-savanna mosaic of tropical Africa.

Since probably 3500 BCE,[5][6] the Saharan and sub-Saharan regions of Africa have
been separated by the extremely harsh climate of the sparsely populated Sahara,
forming an effective barrier interrupted by only the Nile in Sudan, though the Nile
was blocked by the river's cataracts. The Sahara pump theory explains how flora and
fauna (including Homo sapiens) left Africa to penetrate the Middle East and beyond.
African pluvial periods are associated with a Wet Sahara phase, during which larger
lakes and more rivers existed.[7]

The use of the term has been criticized because it refers to the South only by
cartography conventions and projects a connotation of inferiority; a vestige of
colonialism, which some say, divided Africa into European terms of homogeneity.[8]
[9]