This review of landform-regolith associations at a reference locality in Burkina Faso decodes the 50-million-year
long paleoclimatic imprint on the African landscape. Stepwise morpho-pedogenesis formed a sequence of
landform-regolith associations, offering insights into surface evolution processes at successive landscape stages.
The landscape evolved in response to wet-to-dry climatic transitions at ca. 34(?), 24, 11, 6, and 2.9 Ma, with each
shift leading to the formation of pediments that were weathered and cemented by iron duricrusts after subse-
quent dry-to-wet shifts at around 29, 18, 7, and 3.4 Ma. This evolution resulted in (i) sequential dispersion and
recycling of Paleogene regolith on pediment surfaces, and (ii) regolith (i.e., clastic sediments) delivery to rivers
during dry periods at 34(?) – 29 Ma, 24 – 18 Ma, 11 – 7 Ma, 6 – 3.4 Ma, and 2.9 – 0 Ma. The time laps between regolith
production in weathering profiles and its fluvial discharge can be > 40 My, necessitating caution in paleoclimatic
interpretations of the sink sedimentary record. Shifts in the nature of regolith delivery are anticipated at ~24 Ma
(end of extremely warm and wet climatic regimes) and at ~6 Ma (settling of the modern latitudinal climatic
zonation over Northern Africa). Very-slow and steady base-level lowering ( < 3.5 m/My since 45 Ma) responded
to the very long-term sequence of eustatic sea-level fall since the Early Eocene. The morpho-pedogenetic evo-
lution produced a landscape with its highest reliefs composed of weak, weathering-prone lithologies protected by
iron-rich duricrusts. Regolith recycling implies that without detailed geomorphological, petrographic, and
sedimentological field investigations, the geochronological characterization of the regolith can be misleading for
paleoclimatic, morphogenetic and source-to-sink studies. This review provides an updated landscape evolution
model for Northwestern Africa and highlights the potential of mapping landform-regolith associations as pa-
leoclimatic markers, with broad applicability to Cenozoic continental surface dynamics. Landform-regolith
mapping is proving a key tool to assess tropical geodiversity, which is shown to have increased since 45 Ma
as a result of the diversification of the successive landform-regolith associations.

Laterite, Critical zone, Erosion, Weathering, Sediment routing system, Etchplain, Pediment, Geodiversity, Burkina Faso