Kalahari Desert Kalahari Desert The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savanna in Southern Africa extending for , covering much of Botswana, parts of Namibia and regions of South Africa. "Kalahari" is derived from the Tswana word "Kgala", meaning "the great thirst", or "Kgalagadi", meaning "a waterless place"; the Kalahari has vast areas covered by red sand without any permanent surface water. Drainage of the desert is by dry valleys, seasonally inundated pans and the large salt pans of the Makgadikgadi Pan in Botswana and Etosha Pan in Namibia. The only permanent river, the Okavango, flows into a delta in the
Kalahari Desert may be in part the residues of ancient lakes; the Kalahari Desert was once a much wetter place. The ancient Lake Makgadikgadi dominated the area, covering the Makgadikgadi Pan and surrounding areas, but it drained or dried out some 10,000 years ago. It may have once covered as much as . The Kalahari has had a complex climatic history over the past million or so years, in line with major global changes. Changes in the last 250,000 years have been reconstructed from various data sources, and provide evidence of both former extensive lakes and periods drier than now. During the