LYCOS RETRIEVER
Africa: Southern Africa
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Located in southern Africa, Lesotho's apparel industry is the major form of employment in this landlocked country of 1.8 million people, accounting for approximately 40% of the jobs. With an average per capita income of just $436, Lesotho is classified as one of the poorest developing countries in the world.
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Africa is primarily a high interior plateau bounded by steep escarpments. These features show evidence of the giant faults created during the drift of neighboring continents. The surface of the plateau ranges from 4000–5000 ft (1200–1500 m) in the south to about 1000 ft (300 m) in the Sahara. These differences in elevation are particularly apparent in the Great Escarpment region in southern Africa, where the land suddenly drops from 5000 ft (1500 m) to a narrow coastal belt. Although most of the continent is classified as plateau, not all of its surface is flat. Rather, most of its physiographic features have been differentially shaped by processes such as folding, faulting, volcanism, erosion, and deposition.
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In comparison to the rest of the world, the dimensions of the AIDs epidemic in Africa are staggering. The southernmost countries have been particularly affected. AIDS has had a dramatic effect on life expectancy. Because AIDs attacks the economically productive portion of the population, it has seriously affected economic activity , adding to the overall cycle of poverty and hopelessness that grips much of the continent.
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Southern Africa remains the worst affected area. The highest number of HIV infections in the world live in South Africa, with the U.N. estimating that one in nine or 4.7 million people in South Africa live with the virus.
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West Africa occupies an area in excess of 6,140,000 km², or approximately one-fifth of Africa. The vast majority of this land is plains lying less than 300 meters above sea level, though isolated high points exist in numerous countries along the southern shore of the region.
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Speakers of Bantu languages (part of the Niger-Congo family) are the majority in southern, central and East Africa proper. But there are ... several Nilotic groups in East Africa, and a few remaining indigenous Khoisan ('San' or 'Bushmen') and Pygmy peoples in southern and central Africa, respectively. Bantu-speaking Africans also predominate in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, and are found in parts of southern Cameroon and southern Somalia. In the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa, the distinct people known as the Bushmen (also "San", closely related to, but distinct from "Hottentots") have long been present. The San are physically distinct from other Africans and are the indigenous people of southern Africa. Pygmies are the pre-Bantu indigenous peoples of central Africa.
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