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[[File:LocationSouthernAfrica.png|right|thumb|upright=1.6|
]] [[File:Africa-regions.png|right|thumb|upright=1.6| United Nations geoscheme for Africa
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Southern Africa is the southernmost region of Africa. No definition is agreed upon, but some groupings include the United Nations geoscheme, the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community, and the physical geography definition based on the physical characteristics of the land. The most restrictive definition considers the region of Southern Africa to consist of Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, and South Africa, while other definitions also include several other countries from the area.
Defined by physical geography, Southern Africa is home to several river systems; the Zambezi is the most prominent. The Zambezi flows from the northwest corner of Zambia and western Angola to the Indian Ocean on the coast of Mozambique. Along the way, it flows over Victoria Falls on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Victoria Falls is one of the largest waterfalls in the world and a major tourist attraction for the region.
Southern Africa includes both subtropics and temperate climates, with the Tropic of Capricorn running through the middle of the region, dividing it into its subtropical and temperate halves. Countries commonly included in Southern Africa include Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In cultural geography, the island country of Madagascar is often not included due to its distinct language and cultural heritage.
Southern Africa has a more developed economy and infrastructure compared to the other regions of Africa, having a robust mining sector, comparatively developed secondary and tertiary sectors, and a strong manufacturing sector. Nevertheless, the region continues to struggle with inequality, crime, poverty, and the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Africa, with Eswatini, Lesotho, Botswana, South Africa, and Namibia having the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the world.
The Southern African Customs Union, created in 1969, also comprises the five states in the UN subregion of Southern Africa.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is generally included in Central Africa, while Seychelles and Tanzania are more commonly associated with Eastern Africa, but these three countries have occasionally been included in Southern Africa, as they are the SADC members.
In terms of natural resources, the region has the world's largest resources of platinum and the platinum group elements, chromium, vanadium, and cobalt, as well as uranium, gold, copper, titanium, iron, manganese, silver, beryllium, and diamonds.
Southern Africa is set apart from other Sub-Saharan African regions because of its mineral resources, including copper, diamonds, gold, zinc, chromium, platinum, manganese, iron ore, and coal. Countries in Southern Africa are larger in geographic area, except three smaller landlocked states: Lesotho, Eswatini (Swaziland), and Malawi. The larger states — South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, and Angola — all have extensive mineral deposits.
These widespread mineral resources make this one of the wealthiest regions of Africa with the greatest potential for economic growth. A chain of mineral resources in Southern Africa stretches from the rich oil fields in northwest Angola, east through the central diamond-mining region in Huambo Province, and into the Copper Belt region of Zambia and Congo. A region of rich mineral deposits continues to the south called the Great Dyke in central Zimbabwe, through the Bushveld basin into South Africa. This extends southwest through the Witwatersrand and Northern Cape of South Africa toward the southern coast. Mining activity exists across the eastern region. Diamond mining is found in parts of Botswana and along the Namibian coast. Coal can also be found in central Mozambique, Zimbabwe and northeast South Africa.
Altitude plays an outsize role in moderating the temperatures of the South African Highveld, Lesotho, and much of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The prairie region of central and northeast South Africa, the country of Zimbabwe, and parts of Zambia are known as the veldt, divided into the Bushveld and Highveld. There are high temperatures and low rainfall within the Zambezi and Limpopo river valleys, probably due to the lower altitude.
The Western Cape has a Mediterranean vegetation and climate, including the unique fynbos, grading eastward into an oceanic climate along the Garden Route to Port Elizabeth and East London. The Namib and Kalahari Desert deserts form arid lands in the centre-west, separating the highlands, woodlands, croplands, and pastures of the wetter and higher East from the Atlantic Ocean. In addition, the Drakensberg and Eastern Highlands separate the highland areas and coastal plains centred on Mozambique in the north and KwaZulu-Natal in the south, the latter of which are often prone to flooding every few years. In the east, the river systems of the Zambezi and Limpopo basin form natural barriers and sea lanes between Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Across most of southern Africa, apart from the Western Cape in South Africa, the major rainfall season is during the southern-hemisphere summer, from December to February. In the Western Cape, the rainfall maximum occurs from June through August.
There are a number of important rainfall-producing weather systems in southern Africa. These include tropical-extra-tropical cloud bands, tropical lows, and tropical cyclones, , and mesoscale convective systems. Winter midlatitude storms account for the June–August rainfall maximum in the western cape.
Year-to-year variability in rainfall, including drought, is associated with changes in global and regional sea surface temperatures. These include the El Nino Southern Oscillation, the Subtropical Indian Ocean Dipole, and changes in the Benguela Current region in the southeast Atlantic.
Future climate projections suggest that much of southern Africa will get hotter and drier in response to global climate change.
Over the 20th century, the region developed a robust manufacturing sector, focused on South Africa and Zimbabwe, which allowed greater prosperity and investments into infrastructure, education and healthcare that elevated both nations into middle class economies and captured growing markets across Africa. However, since the 1990s these industries have struggled in the face of globalization and cheaper imports from China, leading to job losses particularly in heavy industry, gold mining and . Zimbabwe in particular has seen significant deindustrialization as a result of factors both domestic and foreign. While colonialism has left its mark on the development over the course of history, today poverty, corruption, and HIV/AIDS are some of the biggest factors impeding economic growth. In addition, South Africa and Zimbabwe in particular, face high emigration among their leading to a significant brain drain to western economies and billions lost in human capital flight. The pursuit of economics and politics stability is an important part of the region's goals, as demonstrated by the SADC, however complete regional integration remains an elusive target. In terms of economic strength, South Africa is the dominant economy of the region. Generally, mining, agriculture, the public sector and tourism dominate the economies of Southern African countries, apart from South Africa which has mature and flourishing financial, retail, and construction sectors. Zimbabwe maintains a smaller banking and real estate sector along with what remains of its manufacturing industry, despite a protracted economic crisis. Most global banks have their regional offices for Southern Africa based in Johannesburg. Over the years, some the other Southern African nations have invested in economic diversification, and invested public funds into rail, road and air transportation as part of a concerted effort through SADC to boost regional trade and improve communication and transportation. The countries in this region also belong to the Southern Africa Power Pool, which facilitates the development of a competitive electricity market within the SADC region and ensures sustainable energy developments through sound economic, environmental and social practices. The main objective of the power pool is to develop a world class, robust and safe interconnected electrical system across the Southern African Region. According to a report by Southern Africa Power Pool, the three largest producers of electricity in Southern Africa as at 2017, include Eskom in South Africa with an estimated 46,963MW, Zesco in Zambia with 2,877MW and SNL of Angola with 2,442MW. Whilst moderately successful by African standards, the region largely lags behind their Asian counterparts in innovation, foreign direct investment, STEM sciences and research and development.
There are numerous environmental issues in Southern Africa, including air pollution and desertification.
Christianity is by far the most common religion in the region, being the religion of the majority of the population in all countries of Southern Africa (see Christianity in Africa). There are also sizeable Muslim communities in Mozambique and Malawi, and smaller communities in the other countries of the region. There is also a small Hindu community in South Africa. In addition, traditional African religions are also practiced.
These factors vary from country to country. For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has favourable climatic and physical conditions, but performs far below its capacity in food provision due to political instability and poor governance. In contrast, semi-arid countries such as Botswana and Namibia, produce insufficient food, but successfully achieve food security through food imports due to economic growth, political stability and good governance. The Republic of South Africa is a major food producer and exporter in the region.
Data on agricultural production trends and food insecurity especially in term of food availability for Southern Africa is readily available through the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) - Food, Agriculture and Nature Resource Directorate (FARN). However, this data might not fully capture the reality of a region with large urban populations and where food insecurity goes beyond per-capita availability to issues of access and dietary adequacy. Urban food security has been noted as an emerging area of concern in the region, with recent data showing high levels of food insecurity amongst low-income households. In a study of eleven cities in nine countries: Blantyre, Cape Town, Gaborone, Harare, Johannesburg, Lusaka, Maputo, Manzini, Maseru, Durban, and Windhoek, only 17% of households were categorized as 'food-secure' while more than half (57%) of all households surveyed were found to be 'severely food-insecure'.
Some factors affecting urban food insecurity include climate change with potential impact on agricultural productivity, the expansion of supermarkets in the region, which is changing the way people obtain food in the city, rural-to-urban migration, unemployment, and poverty. The issue of food insecurity in general and urban food insecurity in particular in the region is also characterized by an increased consumption of caloric junk food and processed foods leading to potential increase in the co-existence of undernutrition and dietary-related chronic diseases such as obesity and hypertension.Jonathan Crush (2025). 9781920409692, African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN). ISBN 9781920409692 In South Africa for example, while over 50% experience hunger, 61% are overweight or morbidly obese. There is only limited data on the other Southern African countries.
From 2018 to 2021, parts of the region suffered from a period of drought.
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