The property lies along the eastern edge of the Main Ethiopian Rift, on the steep escarpments of the Ethiopian highlands. An area of agroforestry, it utilizes multilayer cultivation with large trees sheltering indigenous enset, the main food crop, under which…
Virunga National Park (covering an area of 790,000 ha) comprises an outstanding diversity of habitats, ranging from swamps and steppes to the snowfields of Rwenzori at an altitude of over 5,000 m, and from lava plains to the savannahs on…
This property protects a landscape mosaic of extraordinary beauty that is shaped by the combined forces of ancient lava outpourings, glaciation and the dissection by the Great Rift Valley. It features volcanic peaks and ridges, dramatic escarpments, sweeping valleys, glacial…
The park's immense savannahs, grasslands and woodlands, interspersed with gallery forests along the river banks and the swampy depressions, are home to four large mammals: the elephant, giraffe, hippopotamus and above all the white rhinoceros. Though much larger than the…
A vast area of primary tropical forest dominated by two spectacular extinct volcanoes, Kahuzi and Biega, the park has a diverse and abundant fauna. One of the last groups of eastern lowland (graueri) gorillas (consisting of only some 250 individuals)…
Salonga National Park is Africa's largest tropical rainforest reserve. Situated at the heart of the central basin of the Congo river, the park is very isolated and accessible only by water. It is the habitat of many endemic endangered species,…
The Okapi Wildlife Reserve occupies about one-fifth of the Ituri forest in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Congo river basin, of which the reserve and forest are a part, is one of the largest drainage…
Located at over 2,000 m above sea level, the capital of Eritrea developed from the 1890s onwards as a military outpost for the Italian colonial power. After 1935, Asmara underwent a large scale programme of construction applying the Italian rationalist…
This property is an excellent example, at an exceptionally large-scale, of the process of post-glacial forest recolonization of savanna ecosystems. It is therefore ecologically significant as a convergence point of multiple ecosystem types (Congolese Forest, Lower Guinean Forest and Savanna).…
The first capital of Côte d’Ivoire, the Historic Town of Grand-Bassam, is an example of a late 19th– and early 20th-century colonial town planned with quarters specializing in commerce, administration, housing for Europeans and for Africans. The site includes the…
The eight Sudanese-style mosques located in Tengréla, Kouto, Sorobango, Samatiguila, Nambira, Kong, and Kaouara are characterized by earthen construction, projecting frameworks, vertical buttresses crowned with pottery or ostrich eggs, and high or low minarets in the form of a truncated…
This park is one of the last major remnants of the primary tropical forest of West Africa. Its rich natural flora, and threatened mammal species such as the pygmy hippopotamus and 11 species of monkeys, are of great scientific interest.