Mountains of Adventure in Africa

Besides iconic mountains like Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa has many equally impressive mountains for adventure tourists to climb, bike, hike, snow ski, or cave-explore.

Mountain Heights

Before we delve into this list of African mountains, let’s determine the parameters used to define a mountain. By definition, a mountain is any land mass that rises abruptly from the Earth’s crust, with steep or sloping sides that expose bedrock, and a height that rises to peak at 610 metres or more above the surrounding surface. However, considering that 71% of the Earth’s crust lies below water, geologist measure land elevations from sea level using altitude (air pressure) to determine height.

Using above sea level as the parameter, some measures consider a mountain to be any land mass that rises 1,000 metres or more. If we used 1,000 metres above sea level as the parameter, just about every inland region would be a mountain. For example, Botswana, at 1,013 metres above sea level, would make every ant hill in the country a mountain. Of course, Botswana does have hills that rise 1,000 metres or more above sea level, but these only rise a few hundred metres above the surrounding landscape, like Monalanong Hill at 1,494 m or Tsodilo Hills at 1,375 m. Likewise, Tunisias mountains, despite having the Dorsal Mountains (part of the Atlas Range) running through its Western region, only peak between 1,174 m (Jebel Kesra) and 1,370 m (Jebel Mghila).

If we used volume as the parameter this would be a very short list. By volume, though, Mount Kilimanjaro is the largest stratovolcano (non-shield volcano) in the world in terms of base area (635 km2) and volume (4,739 km3).

To solve the measurement parameter dilemma for this article, we’ll consider a mountain to be a land mass that rises 2,000 metres or more above sea level (sorry, Botswana and Tunisia, you’ve missed being included in the list). Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa is also not included despite it being a major tourism attraction. On this basis then, here’s Walk For Africa’s list of mountains and mountain peaks by country.

List of Mountains in Africa by Country