Regions

East Africa

Also Known As Eastern Africa

Citation Formats

General Reference

Geography Atlas. "East Africa." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://geography.interactiveatlas.org/regions/east-africa.

APA Style

Geography Atlas. (n.d.). East Africa. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://geography.interactiveatlas.org/regions/east-africa

BibTeX

@misc{geographyatlas-east-africa,
  author = {Geography Atlas},
  title = {East Africa},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://geography.interactiveatlas.org/regions/east-africa},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

A region of eastern Africa reckoned by Encyclopaedia Britannica to comprise Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda together with the Horn of Africa states of Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea, though the boundary against Central and Southern Africa is drawn differently by different sources. The region holds a chain of deep lakes belonging to the East African Rift, including Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi, and volcanic highlands whose fossil record has been central to the study of early human evolution. Its Indian Ocean coast, the Swahili Coast, carried centuries of trade linking the African interior to Arabia, Persia and South Asia.

Facts

Area (sq km)

3,678,394 1

Encyclopaedia Britannica figure for the Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Horn of Africa scope named in the entity description; the direct Britannica page could not be fetched live (bot block, queued) so this is corroborated by summing the seven constituent countries own areas rather than read off a single locator.

Disputed

Population

537,900,000 2

2017 CIA-derived estimate for the UN geoscheme eastern-Africa grouping; the region's own country membership varies by source.

Cross-Tradition Connections