Even though Africa is the second-largest continent on Earth at 30,37 million square kilometres, its coastline at an estimated 30,500 km is considered to be shorter than that of Europe, because there are few inlets and large bays or gulfs. When considering the above, the lengths/distances indicated need to be treated as rough estimates as the totals would vary depending on the approach used.
This is because the measure of a country’s coastline varies with the scale at which it is measured, so small-scale maps yield lower values of coastline measurement than do larger-scale maps.
Based on current coastline data available from various online sources, Madagascar has the longest coastline, followed by Somalia, South Africa, and Mozambique, while the Democratic Republic of Congo has the shortest coastline in Africa.
Excluding European dependencies and territories off the coasts of the African continent i.e St Helena, Comores, Mayotte, Réunion, Canary Islands, Madeira Islands, and Selvagens, Africa has a total of 293 islands.
This article contains a list of countries by length of coastline, in kilometers. Though the coastline paradox stipulates that coastlines do not have a well-defined length, there are various methods in use to measure coastlines through ratios and other metrics. The coastline paradox states that a coastline does not have a well-defined length.
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Measurements of the length of a coastline behave like a fractal, being different at different scale intervals (distance between points on the coastline at which measurements are taken). An example of the coastline paradox. If measured using an interval of 125 mi (200 km), the coast of Great Britain has a length of about 1,500 mi (2,400 km).
Somalia has the longest national coastline (3025 km) in Africa with an estimated shelf area (depth 0-200 m) of 32 500 km2. The country is divided into the northern coastal plain of Guban, which has a semi-arid terrain; the northern highlands with rugged mountain ranges containing the country’s highest peak (2407 m); and the Ogaden region which descends to the south from the highlands and which consists of shallow plateau valleys, wadis and broken mountains.
From Ras Caseyr to the Kenya border, the coast runs north-east to south-west, coinciding with the displacement caused by the Mesozoic marginal subsidence. This general structure is complicated by sedimentary troughs crossing the Horn of Africa, and by large sedimentary basins, cutting the coastline and extending inland into Southern Somalia and Northern Kenya (Juba-Lamu embayment, Mogadishu basin). Offshore, the western Somali Basin extends from Socotra to the Comores.
The rocks along the southern coastal belt are Pliocene-Pleistocene, and are characterized by a sequence of both marine and continental deposits of skeletal sands, coral build-ups, eolian sands and paleosols. As well as eolian and biogenic sedimentary processes, sea-level fluctuations, Holocene climatic changes and neotectonic movements have combined to produce the modern coastline. A notable feature is an ancient dune ridge complex, known as the Merka red dune, which rims the coast extending beyond the Kenyan border and which separates the narrow coastal belt from the Uebi Shebeli alluvial plain.
Abundant biomass develops here due to upwelling. The shelf area has a wide variety of coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass meadows, beaches and estuaries. In shallow water areas the abraded flats are colonized by scattered coral communities with variable cover. A true fringing reef is achieved in places only in the Bajuni archipelago.
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All along the southern Somali coastal shelf there are spreading meadows of Thalassodendronseagrass, and benthic communities typical of mobile sandy substrates are limited to beach ridges and shoals developed along the coastline. Around the Bajuni barrier island and the channelized area there is more diversity.
Large-scale alteration produced by man on the Somali coast is relatively recent, but has accelerated in the last few decades, especially around major cities. This alteration affects especially backshore areas where the Pleistocene coral reefs are quarried.
Somalia is one of the world’s poorest and least developed countries, with few resources and devastated by civil war, but since 1993 it has been part of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). This will affect fisheries and aquaculture in terms of the investment, production, trade and fish consumption of the member states.
There are currently no marine protected areas and no legislation concerning their establishment and management, although the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) Protected Areas Database lists Busc Busc Game Reserve as an MPA.
In 1992, The WCMC also listed the following coastal sites as proposed protected areas: Zeila (important sea bird colonies on offshore islets), Jowhar-Warshek, Awdhegle-Gandershe.
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Somalia's coastline consists of the Gulf of Aden to the north, the Guardafui Channel to the northeast and the Indian Ocean to the east. The total length of the coastline is approximately 3333 km, giving the country the longest coastline on mainland Africa. The country has the second-longest coastline in all of Africa, behind the island nation of Madagascar (4828 km).
The coastline is generally divided into two parts, northern and eastern coastlines, separated by the tip of the Horn of Africa known as Cape Guardafui. The city of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, is situated in the south of the country along the eastern coastline. The northern coastline is shared with the Gulf of Aden, the northeastern with the Guardafui Channel, and the eastern with the Indian Ocean.
The coastline plays a major role in maintaining the economy of the country through fishing and trade; meanwhile, other areas of the economy are less productive. The northern tip of the coastline meets Djibouti in the west and the eastern tip meets Kenya in the south. There are a number of islands near the coastal areas.
Being the second-longest in Africa, this coastline is the easternmost coastline of continental Africa, comprises part of the north-western coastline of the Indian Ocean, and is the nearest coastline to the Socotra Islands, which are part of Yemen. Its continental shelf spreads over 32,500 km2.
Coastal Somalia is rich in biodiversity; its ecosystem is known as the "Somali Current Large Marine Ecosystem". Sixty-three species of corals belonging to 27 genera are found near the Bajuni archipelago.
Data marked The World Factbook or TWF covers 198 countries and 55 territories, from the book published by the Central Intelligence Agency. In addition to coastline lengths, this is the source of the land area used to calculate the "coast/area ratio" for both TWF and WRI (see below) coastline measurement. This ratio measures how many metres of coastline correspond to every square kilometer of land area.
The ratio illustrates the ease of accessibility to the country's coast from every point in its interior. Therefore, an island country like Maldives, or a country carved by the sea like Greece, is more likely to have a high ratio, while a landlocked country will have a ratio of zero.
Data marked World Resources Institute or WRI covers 182 independent countries and 13 dependencies, based on data calculated in 2000 from the World Vector Shoreline, United States Defense Mapping Agency, 1989. It may include territories whose status have changed. According to their technical notes, the "coastline length was derived from the World Vector Shoreline database at 1:250,000 scale.
The estimates (...) were calculated using a Geographic Information System (GIS) and an underlying database consistent for the entire world. The methodology used to estimate length is based on the following: 1) A country's coastline is made up of individual lines, and an individual line has two or more vertices and/or nodes. 2) The length between two vertices is calculated on the surface of a sphere. 3) The sum of the lengths of the pairs of vertices is aggregated for each individual line, and 4) the sum of the lengths of individual lines was aggregated for a country. In general, the coastline length of islands that are part of a country, but are not overseas territories, are included in the coastline estimate for that country (e.g., Canary Islands are included in Spain). Coastline length for overseas territories and dependencies are listed separately.
Table of African Countries with Longest Coastlines
| Country | Coastline Length (km) |
|---|---|
| Madagascar | 4,828 |
| Somalia | 3,333 |
| South Africa | 2,798 |
| Mozambique | 2,470 |
An example of the coastline paradox.
Location map of Somalia.
Explore Africa Series - The Country Of Somalia
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