By Phuong Tran Ingkaka, Niger 10 April 2008 In countries bordering the Saharan desert, ethnic nomad Tuareg have turned their desert expertise into a money maker through tourism and smuggling. Phuong Tran recently traveled with an Algerian gasoline sm...
By Phuong Tran Northern Niger 27 February 2008 For centuries, routes through the Sahara Desert have been used to transport goods. In recent years,4x4 convoys of cocaine and hashish have joined caravans bearing salt, cigarettes and fuel. VOA reporter...
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Arabian camels and nomadic people are the most recent in a long line of Saharan pioneers. The history of this great region is told in ancient rock art, glimpses of a vanished world. Just a few thousan...
The Arabian camel--not even a native , was domesticated in the deserts of Asia and brought to Northern Africa as a means of transport. In the past , Tuareg nomads used camels to move slaves, gold and...
But this hasn't always been so. Over the last 15 million years, Africa's climate has repeatedly swung from wet to dry and back again as Ice Ages have come and gone. At times the Kalahari has been much...
Teamwork has helped the weavers find a neat solution to the problems posed by the Kalahari sun. But some creatures are even better equipped. Ground squirrels have ready-made parasols. Under the shadow...
Cheetah s are sprinter s, not made for a long-distance chase. So they must get close. But springbok have keen senses. True to their name, springbok can leap two meters high. It's jumping with a purpos...
Living underground, mole rats are sheltered from the Kalahari's worst extremes of temperature. We think of deserts as hot places. But nightly temperatures can fall well below zero. At dawn, meerkat s...
It’s the wettest of all African deserts, the great Kalahari. The sands of the Kalahari cover more of southern Africa than any other desert. But the higher rainfall here gives it a very distinctive a...
