Sudan (esp. Meroe, of the Kush) has shockingly unmissable pyramids-based monumental areas. «Beginning around 2500BC, Sudan’s ancient Nubian civilisation left behind more than 200 pyramids ... in addition to temples, tombs and royal burial chambers». Those in Giza are champions in size, but those around the south of the Nile are breathtaking gems.

But the topic is actually _desertification_.

That article of impressive images exemplifies the threat against monuments and constructions in general, but the issue is of course biological. The opportunity for this submission comes as a podcast just came out on The Conversation, "Soil [... is] the foundation of life and needs real care". Of course. Soil is the condition for vegetation, hence for animal nutrition. There seems to be no transcript for the podcast (though the The Conversation sometimes offers them). Its page: https://theconversation.com/soil-isnt-dirt-its-the-foundatio...

They have a page specific for the topic: https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/desertification-19970

and a more abundant search results page: https://theconversation.com/africa/search?q=desertification

here is the search results page for 'soil': https://theconversation.com/africa/search?q=soil

Of those linked articles about a fundamental topic (and strongly interesting engineering contexts), I would also like to highlight as an aside one (very recent) title for awareness: "Microplastics aren't just a problem for the ocean - they’re in our soils too", https://theconversation.com/microplastics-arent-just-a-probl...