Best Dryland
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The Kalahari savanna spans Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa as a semi-arid sandveld—despite its 'desert' name—supporting springbok, gemsbok, and brown hyena on red Kalahari sand.
Uganda's Kidepo Valley savanna, gazetted as a national park in 1962 near the South Sudan border, is considered one of Africa's most pristine and remote wilderness areas.
Samburu savanna in northern Kenya supports endemic dry-country species including Grevy's zebra, reticulated giraffe, and the Somali ostrich not found further south.
Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana, established 1961 at 52,800 sq km, is one of the world's largest game reserves, partly created to protect San Bushmen communities.
Turkana savanna surrounds Lake Turkana in Kenya's arid north, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site recognized for its paleoanthropological significance and fossil record.
Awash National Park (est. 1966), Ethiopia's first national park, protects savanna along the Awash River in the Afar Region, known for oryx, kudu, and hamadryas baboons.
The Maasai Steppe is a semi-arid savanna spanning northeastern Tanzania's Arusha and Manyara regions, serving as a traditional Maasai pastoral landscape and wildlife corridor.
Sahel Savanna is a semi-arid transitional belt stretching 5,400 km across Africa from Senegal to Eritrea, defined by 200–600 mm annual rainfall and characterized by Acacia-dominated grassland and shrubland.
The Ogaden savanna in Ethiopia's Somali Region is a vast semi-arid grassland inhabited by nomadic Somali pastoralists and the site of the 1977–78 Ethiopian-Somali Ogaden War.
