A holiday maker laps up the sun on the second largest island of a five-island archipelago. This slice of paradise was one of the few places that was safe to visit during the final years of this country’s protracted civil war. As the photograph suggests, it is everything that an Indian Ocean island should be. White, palm-lined beaches give way to superb diving …

Visitors to this sleepy town in North Africa are greeted by the remains of an enormous amphitheatre rising from the desert sands. Photo © Ali Afghah Second in size only to the Colosseum in Rome, it was built in the third century AD by the Romans during their 600-year occupation of this part of the continent. The …

Like a scene from Dante’s ‘Inferno’, this low-lying geological phenomenon in the Horn of Africa experiences hellish conditions. Photo © Jean Filippo Temperatures reach 55 °C, rainfall is scant and its floor is seismically unstable, with pools of sulphur-laden water that evaporates and cools to reveal salts of every hue and shape. In addition, the earth’s crust is so thin …

When you drive across the arid, undulating plains of one of southern Africa’s least populated countries, little warning is given of the dramatic fissure that scars its face. Here ancient cliffs in shades of purple, lilac and gold drop vertiginously to a winding river, which in the hot summer dries up to form still pools. Everything about the chasm is impressive: it is 161 …

The North African village of Douiret, carved into a kilometre-long stretch of mountainside, once housed a thriving Berber community and its fortified granaries, called ksour. Today, the village is almost abandoned, with just a handful of houses still inhabited and, from a distance, the only sign of its existence is the simple white mosque that still stands at its …

Emerald rice fields lie on the outskirts of the capital of this Indian Ocean island state. Photo © Gerald Cubitt, Evocative Africa The grain is the prime food of the islanders, who each consume some 100 kilograms of it every year. An aura of mystery shrouds the country, engendered by the complex beliefs and customs …