Sahel Region "EMPOWER IAS"

Context: 

• The massacre of at least 160 people in a border village in Burkina Faso over the weekend is a grim reminder of the threat the Sahel region faces from Islamist terrorism. 

 

More in news:

• Burkinabe authorities have named the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), which has carried out hundreds of terror strikes in recent years. 
• The security situation in Burkina Faso has deteriorated steadily, especially along the borders with Niger and Mali. 
• This has been the case with much of the Sahel region, a 5,900-km-long semi-arid territory. 
• In Nigeria, Islamists control swathes of territories and have carried out abductions and attacks.
• The Sahel region stretches across Africa under the Sahara desert and spans half a dozen countries.

 

 

SAHEL

 

 

Sahel Region

• The Sahel is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic realm of transition in Africa between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian savanna to the south.
• Having a semi-arid climate, it stretches across the south-central latitudes of Northern Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea.
• The name is derived from the Arabic term for “coast, shore”; this is explained as being used in a figurative sense in reference to the southern edge of the vast Sahara.
• The Sahel part includes from west to east parts of northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, central Mali, northern Burkina Faso, the extreme south of Algeria, Niger, the extreme north of Nigeria, the extreme north of Cameroon and the Central African Republic, central Chad, central and southern Sudan, the extreme north of South Sudan, Eritrea and the extreme north of Ethiopia.