South Africa occupies the southern tip of Africa, Its long coastline stretching more than 2,798km from the desert border with Namibia on the Atlantic coast, southwards around the tip of Africa, then north to the border with subtropical Mozambique on the Indian Ocean.
The country has nine provinces, which vary considerably in size. The smallest is tiny and crowded Gauteng, a highly urbanised region, and the largest the vast, arid and empty Northern Cape, which takes up almost a third of South Africa’s total land area. South Africa is a medium-sized country, with a total land area of slightly more than 1.2-million square kilometers, making it roughly the same size as Niger, Angola, Mali and Colombia. South Africa measures some 1 600km from north to south, and roughly the same from east to west.