A growing body of empirical evidence supporting or opposing the mechanistic hypotheses and predictions of self-organization models exist which have been applied to the case of spatially periodic vegetation patterns found in semi-arid and arid areas around hot deserts in Africa. Overall, remarkable qualitative – and sometimes quantitative – agreement is found and presented here between the rich theoretical framework and predictions of self-organization models and the results of field and remotely sensed investigations for dryland areas in Niger, Morocco and Sudan