The Sahara Desert is mainly on which continent?

The Sahara Desert is mainly on the continent of Africa.

The Sahara stretches across much of northern Africa, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. It reaches north toward the Mediterranean and south to the Sahel, a semi-arid belt that transitions into savanna. The desert includes parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia and Western Sahara.

Covering roughly 9.2 million square kilometres, the Sahara is the world’s largest hot desert and the third-largest desert overall, after Antarctica and the Arctic. Despite popular images of endless dunes, much of it consists of rocky plateaus, gravel plains, dry valleys and salt flats.

A frequent mistake is to confuse “largest desert” with “largest hot desert.” Antarctica is technically a desert because it receives very little precipitation, but it is polar rather than hot. Another surprising fact is that the Sahara was greener during the African humid period, when stronger monsoons supported lakes, grasslands and wildlife.