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That's right....thanks for the correction. I was tossing around whether to write Tanzania or not, because I knew it was close to Kenya.
It's not so much a change in elevation that dictates where the deserts are, but that can have an effect (especially in localised orographically generated climate systems). It's the atmospheric circulation patterns which are present that dictate where they are (plus some other factors). Most of the world's deserts lie in belts that roughly straddle an area between 20-35 degrees north and south of the equator. This is no coincidence. What we have is the downflow stream of the Hadley Cells in these areas. They're essentially the subtropical high pressure belts. You have cool to cold, dry upper level air coming down from height towards the surface at these positions. That's why deserts form in these regions because there's little moisture in the air and/or little upwelling occurring in these areas.
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