Southern Africa

Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics, and including several countries. The term southern Africa or Southern Africa, generally includes Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. From a political perspective the region is said to be unipolar with South Africa as a first regional power.

In the UN scheme of geographic regions, five countries constitute Southern Africa:

The Southern African Customs Union (SACU), created in 1969, also comprises the five countries in the UN subregion of Southern Africa.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) was established in 1980 to facilitate co-operation in the region. It includes:

The region is sometimes reckoned to include other territories:

The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania, though more commonly reckoned in Central and Eastern Africa, respectively, are occasionally included in Southern Africa as they are SADC members.

Another geographic delineation for the region is the portion of Africa south of the Cunene and Zambezi Rivers – that is: South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and the part of Mozambique which lies south of the Zambezi River. This definition is most often used in South Africa for natural sciences and particularly in guide books such as Roberts' Birds of Southern Africa, the Southern African Bird Atlas Project and Mammals of the Southern African Subregion. It is not used in political, economic or human geography contexts because this definition cuts Mozambique in two.

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