The Luapula River is a north-flowing river of central Africa, within the Congo River watershed. [note 2] It rises in the wetlands of Lake Bangweulu (Zambia), which are fed by the Chambeshi River. The Luapula flows west then north, marking the border between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo before emptying into Lake Mweru. The river gives its name to Zambia's Luapula Province. [2]
The Luapula drains Lake Bangweulu and its swamps into which flows the Chambeshi River, the source of the Congo. There is no single clear channel connecting the two rivers and the lake, but a mass of shifting channels, lagoons and swamps, as the explorer David Livingstone found to his cost. (He died exploring the area, and one of his last acts was to question Chief Chitambo about the course of the Luapula.) [3] [4] The channel boldly marked as the 'Luapula' and confidently shown on many maps flowing south out of Lake Bangweulu at 11°25'S 29°49'E can be seen on satellite images such as Google Earth to actually peter out into green vegetation around 11°46'S 29°48'E. [5]
Below the Bangweulu swamps and floodplain, the Luapula flows steadily in an arc south-west turning north-west then north, with some rapids and well-known set of cataracts, Mambilima Falls near the main road. [2] A far less well-known site is Tangwa, about 40 kilometres (25 mi) south where the river has eroded a gap through rocky hills carving huge caves, arches, and potholes, and leaving giant boulders, including two balancing rocks called 'God's Corn Bin'. [6]
From the Chembe Bridge to Lake Mweru, the 300 kilometres (190 mi) long Luapula Valley has a higher rural population than the plateau through which it cuts to a depth of up to 500 metres (1,600 ft). The river is known for this valley and for its long thin delta entering Lake Mweru, usually referred to as the Luapula Swamps. The well-populated part of the valley starts north from Mambilima Falls, and along the rest of its length is nicknamed 'Mwapoleni Road', after the Chibemba greeting called out as people pass each other. [6]
For many practical study purposes, the lower Luapula and Mweru can be considered as one entity. They lie in a rift valley or graben once considered separate from the East African Rift but now seen as a branch of it. Mweru, however, drains not into Lake Tanganyika in the Albertine Rift but via the Luvua River, which has cut a deep, narrow zigzag valley to join the Lualaba River, as the upper Congo is named. The Luapula is part of the longest tributary of the Congo, and hence, by convention, is part of its source, even though the upper Lualaba carries more water.
Overlying the edge of the rift valley 60 kilometres (37 mi) west of the Luapula Swamps is the Luizi structure, a 12.6 kilometres (7.8 mi) wide series of concentric rings. It has been recently confirmed as a meteoritic impact crater (an astrobleme) formed less than 600 million years ago. [7] [8]
The swamps stretch along the last 100 kilometres (62 mi) of the river before it reaches the lake, and for much of that, they are 30 kilometres (19 mi) wide, covering an area of about 2,500 square kilometres (970 sq mi). There are four inhabited islands in the DR Congo part of the delta, including the largest in the system which is connected to dry land in the dry season. Zambia has three inhabited islands in the delta including Chisenga Island. There are also many lagoons, the largest of which is Mofwe Lagoon on the Zambian side. [5]
As in the Bangweulu Swamps, floating beds of papyrus are a feature of the swamps, which often block channels and change the shape of lagoons. However, the main river channel does not get blocked and stays consistently about 400 metres (1,300 ft) wide. It has not developed the branching channels typical of river deltas. [5]
Very tall reeds grow at the edge of the swamps in most places, making it difficult to see over the lagoons from land or to find the way to the maze of narrow channels used by dugout canoes. Guides are needed to navigate through them, and they are a haven for smuggling between the two countries sharing the swamps.
Crocodile and hippopotamus are common and a hazard for fishermen and travellers. However, the Shila people used to hunt hippopotamus using nothing more than harpoons thrown from canoes. [6]
On the western side of the delta in DR Congo is a broad grassy floodplain covering about 1600 km2. At the end of the rainy season, the combined Luapula wetlands exceed 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 sq mi). [5] The floodplain was home to herds of lechwe and the shy sitatunga, the famous semi-aquatic antelopes of the region, but both are believed extinct in the lower Luapula due to hunting and the lack of wildlife management.
The upper and middle reaches of the Luapula are quite sparsely populated.
The natural resources of the lower valley, which include fisheries in the river, lagoons and wetlands with fertile farmland at the margins, attracted the Lunda invaders of Mwata Kazembe to settle there around 1750. Their present capital is at Mwansabombwe on the edge of the delta. Arab traders and slavers from Zanzibar and Portuguese traders from Mozambique were attracted to the area in the 18th and 19th Centuries. David Livingstone was the first Briton to visit in 1867. He did not explore the river but in his hunt for the origin of the Nile, Mwata Kazembe was the first to tell him that the Luapula connects the Chambeshi/Bangweulu and Mweru/Luvua/Lualaba systems. Livingstone wrongly believed the Lualaba then flowed to the Nile rather than to the River Congo. [4]
Some of the first missionaries in Central Africa were also attracted to the valley. The first was the Garanganze Mission of the Plymouth Brethren at Mambilima around 1892, followed by the London Missionary Society at Mbereshi in 1900. [9]
The first large town of the colonial era was the river port, Kasenga, in DR Congo, which grew prosperous in the 1930s from supplying fish to Elizabethville and other towns of the Katanga Copperbelt via the first motor road to reach the valley. Most of the fish was caught in Lake Mweru and brought by boat up the Luapula to Kasenga, where it was packed in ice produced in several plants. Although the fish catch has declined and most now travels on the better roads of Zambia, Kasenga remains the only port on the river. [6] For more on the fisheries of the area, see Lake Mweru .
On the Zambian side of the Luapula, an outbreak of sleeping sickness made the British colonial authorities move their Fort Rosebery boma out of the valley onto the plateau at Mansa, [6] while fears of malaria in the Luapula Swamps made them establish the next on the plateau at Kawambwa. Consequently, the towns and villages in the valley, such as the largest, Mwansabombwe, do not have the same ex-colonial character as the administrative towns. However, following the lead of missionary builders and Mwata Kazembe, from the early 1900s, most housing in the valley was of solid brick construction, sun-dried brick mainly, but with some burnt brick. [6]
Before the advent of road transport, people travelled by canoe along the river between lakes Bangweulu and Mweru. [4]
The lower river between Kasenga and Kilwa on Mweru is now the only stretch of the river carrying much boat transport and most of that is now for DR Congo, where roads are frequently impassable. Up to the late 1940s, the upper Luapula from Kapalala to Lake Bangweulu and the Chambeshi River was one of the most important stretches for river transport in the then Northern Rhodesia. Goods travelled by road from the railhead at Sakania 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) north of Ndola to Kapalala to be loaded onto dugout canoes and small boats. During World War I, a fleet of 1885 such craft were used to convey matériel to Chambeshi from where it went on a military road to Mbala for the East African Campaign. Unfortunately, the floating papyrus and other vegetation frequently choked the channels through the Bangweulu swamps joining the lake, the Luapula and the Chambeshi, making it difficult to use larger motorboats. [10]
The first vehicle pontoon ferries were at Kasenga, Kapalala and Shiniama near Matanda. None remain, though a passenger ferry operates between Kasenga and Kashiba, Zambia. Around 1950 the Chembe Ferry on the Congo Pedicle road became on the main vehicle crossing. The river there is 400 metres (1,300 ft) wide but can flood to 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) wide in a heavy rainy season. In 1983 the first bridge over the river was built, the 2.5-kilometre (1.6 mi) long Luapula Bridge on the Samfya-Serenje Road. The bridge approaches include nearly 20 kilometres (12 mi) of elevated causeway over wetlands and another 40 kilometres (25 mi) of embankment over flood plain. [5] The second bridge over the river, the 320-metre (1,050 ft) long Chembe Bridge was completed in 2008 to replace the Chembe Ferry.
This article is about the Transport in Zambia.
Lake Mweru is a freshwater lake on the longest arm of Africa's second-longest river, the Congo. Located on the border between Zambia and Democratic Republic of the Congo, it makes up 110 kilometres (68 mi) of the total length of the Congo, lying between its Luapula River (upstream) and Luvua River (downstream) segments.
Bangweulu — 'where the water sky meets the sky' — is one of the world's great wetland systems, comprising Lake Bangweulu, the Bangweulu Swamps and the Bangweulu Flats or floodplain. Situated in the upper Congo River basin in Zambia, the Bangweulu system covers an almost completely flat area roughly the size of Connecticut or East Anglia, at an elevation of 1,140 m straddling Zambia's Luapula Province and Northern Province. It is crucial to the economy and biodiversity of northern Zambia, and to the birdlife of a much larger region, and faces environmental stress and conservation issues.
The Luvua River is a river in the Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It flows from the northern end of Lake Mweru on the Zambia-Congo border in a northwesterly direction for 350 kilometres (220 mi) to its confluence with the Lualaba River opposite the town of Ankoro. The Lualaba becomes the Congo River below the Boyoma Falls.
The ChambeshiRiver of northeastern Zambia is the most remote headstream of the Congo River and therefore it is considered the source of the Congo River.
Mansa is the capital of the Luapula Province of Zambia, and headquarters of Mansa District. It takes its name from the local Chief Mansa and the small Mansa River which flows west to the Luapula River. During British rule the city was named Fort Rosebery.
Luapula Province is one of Zambia's ten provinces located in the northern part of the country. Luapula Province is named after the Luapula River and its capital is Mansa. As per the 2022 Zambian census, the Province had a population of 1,519,478, which accounted for 7.72 per cent of the total Zambian population.
Kazembe is a traditional kingdom in modern-day Zambia, and southeastern Congo. For more than 250 years, Kazembe has been an influential kingdom of the Kiluba-Chibemba, speaking the language of the Eastern Luba-Lunda people of south-central Africa. Its position on trade routes in a well-watered, relatively fertile and well-populated area of forestry, fishery and agricultural resources drew expeditions by traders and explorers who called it variously Kasembe, Cazembe and Casembe.
Kazembe is a name used for Mwata Kazembe's town in the Luapula Province of Zambia, especially on maps and in the Zambian postal service. The other name for the town is Mwansabombwe and this is the one used by its or Luba or Chibemba-speaking inhabitants. They may refer in English to "Kazembe's Village" or just "Kazembe", as traditionally a settlement is named after the chief or headman, rather than the location. The Luba-Lunda shared with many tribes the custom of moving to another village or a new site on the death of the chief. Historical references to a village or town may actually be to a different location. For instance when the explorer David Livingstone visited Mwata Kazembe in 1867 and 1868, "Casembe's town", as he wrote it, was further north at the town now called Kanyembo.
Kanyembo is the principal centre of the population on the Mofwe Lagoon, the largest of several lagoons in the Luapula River swamps south of Lake Mweru, in the Luapula Province of Zambia. It takes its name from its traditional ruler, Chief Kanyembo, one of the senior chiefs of the Kazembe-Lunda under Mwata Kazembe. In the past the incumbent Chief has been promoted to Mwata, and Kanyembo was the site of Mwata Kazembe's capital when it was visited by David Livingstone in 1867.
The Mofwe Lagoon is the largest of several lagoons in the Luapula River swamps south of Lake Mweru, in the Luapula Province of Zambia.
The Congo Pedicle is the southeast salient of the Haut-Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which divides neighbouring Zambia into two lobes. In area, the pedicle is similar in size to Wales or New Jersey. 'Pedicle' is used in the sense of 'a little foot'. 'Congo Pedicle' or 'the Pedicle' is also used to refer to the Congo Pedicle road, which crosses it.
The Congo Pedicle road crosses the Congolese territory of the Congo Pedicle and was constructed by and is maintained by Zambia to connect its Copperbelt and Luapula Provinces. Both the road and the territory may be referred to as ‘the Pedicle’. It is designated as the N36 Route on the Congolese Road Network.
Water transport and the many navigable inland waterways in Zambia have a long tradition of practical use except in parts of the south. Since draught animals such as oxen were not heavily used, water transport was usually the only alternative to going on foot until the 19th century. The history and current importance of Zambian waterways, as well as the types of indigenous boats used, provide information on this important aspect of Zambian economy.
The Zambezian flooded grasslands is an ecoregion of southern and eastern Africa that is rich in wildlife.
The biomes and ecoregions in the ecology of Zambia are described, listed and mapped here, following the World Wildlife Fund's classification scheme for terrestrial ecoregions, and the WWF freshwater ecoregion classification for rivers, lakes and wetlands. Zambia is in the Zambezian region of the Afrotropical biogeographic realm. Three terrestrial biomes are well represented in the country . The distribution of the biomes and ecoregions is governed mainly by the physical environment, especially climate.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Zambia:
Zambia, officially known as the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west. The capital city is Lusaka, located in the southeast of the country. The population is concentrated mainly around the capital and the Copperbelt to the northwest.
The Mambatuta Falls is a steep waterfall on the Luapula River, which originates in Lake Bangweulu and flows through Zambia and along the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo into Lake Mweru.
Mambilima Falls is a series of rapids on the Luapula River on the boundary between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The falls used to be called the Johnstone Falls. They extend along a 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) stretch of the river.
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| Kasai basin | ||
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| Lualaba and tributaries | ||
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