Tag Archives: Study in Lesotho

Lesotho is located in southern Africa, at the south-eastern end of the continent, entirely surrounded by the territory of South Africa of which it constitutes an enclave and on which it depends almost absolutely both economically and politically. Lesotho, formerly the British protectorate with the name of Basutoland, that is “land of the Basutos”, has nevertheless been able to preserve its ethnic and cultural characteristics, favored in this by the nature of the country, a mountainous summit of southern Africa, on whose rugged plateaus they perched the Basotho tribes (or basuto), finding the best protection from the aggressions of neighboring peoples and safeguarding national individuality. At the beginning of the year 2000, the country was among the poorest in the world, with a very low life expectancy: the HIV virus affected a large portion of the adult population. In 2005, Lesotho was the first country in the world to provide the vaccine for this virus free of charge. According to COUNTRYAAH, Lesotho is a nation in Southern Africa, the capital city of which is Maseru. The latest population of Lesotho is 2,142,260. REMZFAMILY: Lists and descriptions of main religions and beliefs in Lesotho, including religion demographics and statistics on Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc.
GEOGRAPHY
The territory of Lesotho corresponds to the highest section of southern Africa, occupying a large portion of the Dragons Mountains, the mountainous belt that borders the continent to the SE. In particular, central and eastern Lesotho has a series of plateaus, elevated on average 2000-3000 m, made up of powerful basaltic structures, whose origin dates back to the end of the Triassic and which dominate the most ancient layers of sandstone; they were formed when large fractures opened in the region, in relation to those vast tectonic phenomena that affected all of East Africa, continuing elsewhere in the Cenozoic. Morphologically the mountains of Lesotho are not very rugged; show long ridges, divided by the deep furrows of the tributary rivers of Orange and culminating in the Thabana Ntlenyana (3482 m), in the Champagne Castle (3377 m) and in the Mont-aux-Sources (3299 m), in the group of Maluti mountains. The western section of Lesotho corresponds to a lower plateau (average 1500-1600 m), with a soft and rounded profile, which descends from the foothills of the Draghi Mountains to the valley of the Caledon river; it in turn represents a portion of the vast internal plateaus that cover a large part of southern Africa (Karroo formation) and which are made up of ancient conglomerates and sandstones. From the hydrographic point of view, Lesotho pays entirely to the Atlantic Ocean through the Orange; the river, born from the Mont-aux-Sources, crosses the whole country with a general NE-SW course, gradually enriched by the contribution of numerous tributaries, such as the Senqunya and the Kornet; Caledon also descends to the Orange, forming the western border of Lesotho for a good stretch. The altitude, the mountainous diaphragm of the Dragons Mountains and the varied influence of the hot and humid monsoon air masses coming from the NE influence the climate of Lesotho which on the whole is rather dry, with strong temperature variations. Precipitation is concentrated in the months from October to April (austral summer), when the monsoon air masses are attracted by the depressions that form on the Kalahari desert; they exceed 1200 mm per year on the most exposed eastern slopes of the Draghi Mountains, while inside they are around 600-700 mm. Temperatures are naturally affected above all by changes in altitude; they are around 9-10 ºC (annual average), but during the colder months they often drop below freezing; snowfall can occur between 2500 and 3200 m.