WEST AFRICA

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does West Africa mean? 

• WEST AFRICA (noun)
  The noun WEST AFRICA has 1 sense:

1. an area of western Africa between the Sahara Desert and the Gulf of Guinea

  Familiarity information: WEST AFRICA used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WEST AFRICA (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An area of western Africa between the Sahara Desert and the Gulf of Guinea

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Instance hypernyms:

geographic area; geographic region; geographical area; geographical region (a demarcated area of the Earth)

Meronyms (parts of "West Africa"):

British West Africa (the former British territories of western Africa, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Gambia, Togo, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast)

Holonyms ("West Africa" is a part of...):

Africa (the second largest continent; located to the south of Europe and bordered to the west by the South Atlantic and to the east by the Indian Ocean)

 Context examples 

A tree native to West Africa.

(Johimbe, NCI Dictionary)

This dramatic difference over time is recorded in the rock and fossil record of West Africa.

(Ancient Saharan seaway illustrates how Earth’s climate and creatures can undergo extreme change, National Science Foundation)

The outbreak is the first in West Africa and the first to affect major cities.

(Genetics of the 2014 Ebola Outbreak, NIH)

It is used as an ordeal poison by the medicine-men in certain districts of West Africa and is kept as a secret among them.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

An unprecedented belt of brown algae stretches from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico—and it’s likely here to stay.

(Satellites Find Biggest Seaweed Bloom in the World, NASA)

Looking at maize, the phenomenon caused 38 per cent of production variance in northeast Brazil, 20 per cent in southwest Mexico and 15 per cent in West Africa.

(El Niño linked to widespread crop failures, SciDev.Net)

For example, Lassa fever is limited to rural areas of West Africa where rats and mice carry the virus.

(Hemorrhagic Fevers, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

Recent Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreaks, including the 2013-2016 epidemic that ravaged West Africa and the 2018 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, highlight the need for licensed treatments for this often-deadly disease.

(Broadly acting antibodies found in plasma of Ebola survivors, National Institutes of Health)

The strain responsible for this outbreak appeared to diverge as early as 2004 from one found in Central Africa, indicating movement from Central to West Africa over the span of a decade.

(Genetics of the 2014 Ebola Outbreak, NIH)

The team identified key factors that are critical to bloom formation: a large seed population in the winter left over from a previous bloom, nutrient input from West Africa upwelling in winter, and nutrient input in the spring or summer from the Amazon River.

(Satellites Find Biggest Seaweed Bloom in the World, NASA)