Geography

Swaziland is a southern African kingdom lying between South Africa and Mozambique. The small country (which is about the size of Wales) stretches from the edge of the high flat African plateau, down the escarpment to the flat plains that lead to the sea. As a result the elevations range from some 1800 metres at the highest point to a low of a couple of hundred metres in the hot lowveld.

This range creates a wide variety of ecosystems from the cold highlands of 800 to 1000 metres that are similar to Scotland to the hot lowveld that has illustrated books on Africa for over a hundred years - wide, flat, dry landscapes with flat topped trees. The highlands have a metre or so of rain a year, as a result the nutrients tend to be leached from the soils and although it looks green and fertile, the soils are poor. The highveld is widely used for cultivating timber, particularly pine and eucalyptus which is either planked or made into pulp. It is the middleveld that most people live in and where the largest town, Manzini lies. This is generally a landscape of small farms, many belonging to subsistence farmers with fields of a few hectares and about ten cows. The lowveld has some very fertile soils, but the region is dry, so the large scale sugar industry imports water in large canals for irrigation.