Which continent contains the Sahara Desert?

Which continent contains the Sahara Desert? The Sahara Desert lies in Africa, stretching across much of the continent’s northern region.

The Sahara is the world’s largest hot desert and covers roughly 9.2 million square kilometres. It extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean region southward toward the Sahel. The desert spans parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia and Western Sahara.

Despite popular images of endless dunes, the Sahara is geographically varied. It includes rocky plateaus called hamadas, gravel plains, dry valleys, salt flats and sand seas known as ergs. Some dunes rise more than 180 metres. Rainfall is extremely scarce, but the Nile Valley and scattered oases support long-established communities.

The Sahara is not the world’s largest desert overall: Antarctica and the Arctic are larger because deserts are defined by low precipitation, not by heat. Its name comes from the Arabic ṣaḥrāʾ, meaning “desert.”