Sioma | |
|---|---|
  Sioma Location of Sioma in Zambia | |
| Coordinates: 16°36′20″S23°30′19″E / 16.60556°S 23.50528°E | |
| Country |  Zambia |
| Province | Western |
| District | Sioma |
| Time zone | UTC+2 (CAT) |
Sioma is a town on the west bank of the Zambezi River in the Western Province of Zambia. Since 2012 it has been the capital of the Sioma District. [1]
Sioma is located on the west bank of the Zambezi River 130 kilometres (81 mi) north of Sesheke and 150 kilometres (93 mi) south of the provincial capital Mongu. The town is situated approximately 60 kilometres (37 mi) south of the town of Senanga which marks the southern extent of the Barotse Floodplain.
Vegetation in the area is predominantly Dry Kalahari woodland. [2]
Annually, the town gets an average of 737 millimetres (29.0 in) of rain. [2]
| Climate data for Sioma, Zambia | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Mean daily maximum °C | 22 | 20 | 23 | 25 | 23 | 22 | 21 | 25 | 27 | 28 | 27 | 24 | 24 |
| Mean daily minimum °C | 15 | 16 | 15 | 13 | 11 | 9 | 7 | 10 | 13 | 15 | 15 | 14 | 13 |
| Average precipitation mm | 165 | 147 | 90 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 30 | 162 | 630 |
| Mean daily maximum °F | 72 | 68 | 73 | 77 | 73 | 72 | 70 | 77 | 81 | 82 | 81 | 75 | 75 |
| Mean daily minimum °F | 59 | 61 | 59 | 55 | 52 | 48 | 45 | 50 | 55 | 59 | 59 | 57 | 55 |
| Average precipitation inches | 6.5 | 5.8 | 3.5 | 0.8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.6 | 1.2 | 6.4 | 24.8 |
| Average precipitation days | 19 | 16 | 16 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 9 | 18 | 94 |
| Source: [3] | |||||||||||||
An Early Iron Age site was excavated at Sioma which has been dated to the mid centuries of the first millennium. [4] Some of the pottery at the site resembles that which is found in Nqoma, Angola. [5]
In the 1880s the Portuguese explorer Alexandre Alberto da Rocha de Serpa Pinto and American James Dabney McCabe both described the settlement as a hamlet. Pinto also described how the Lui government forced local residents to act as porters for canoes attempting to get around the nearby Ngonye Falls. [6] [7]
Expansion of the town started in 1957 when the catholic Irish Capuchin Franciscans established the Saint Anthony mission station on the Zambezi river at the town. [8]
In 2012 the town was made the capital of the newly created Sioma District. [9]
The Zambezi is the fourth-longest river in Africa, the longest east-flowing river in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. Its drainage basin covers 1,390,000 km2 (540,000 sq mi), slightly less than half of the Nile's. The 2,574 km (1,599 mi) river rises in Zambia and flows through eastern Angola, along the north-eastern border of Namibia and the northern border of Botswana, then along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe to Mozambique, where it crosses the country to empty into the Indian Ocean.
The Ngonye Falls or Sioma Falls is a waterfall on the Zambezi river in Western province Zambia, near the town of Sioma and a few hundred kilometres upstream from the Victoria Falls. Situated in the southern part of Barotseland, the falls are a day's journey by car from the capital, Lusaka. Their inaccessibility makes them much less known than Victoria Falls. The Ngonye Falls Community Partnership Park is located at the falls.
Western Province is one of the 10 provinces in Zambia and encompasses most of the area formerly known as Barotseland. The capital is Mongu, and together with the neighbouring town of Limulunga, Mongu is treated as the capital of Barotseland.
Livingstone is a city in Zambia. Until 1935, it served as the capital of Northern Rhodesia. Lying 10 km (6 mi) to the north of the Zambezi River, it is a tourism attraction center for the Victoria Falls and a border town with road and rail connections to Zimbabwe on the other side of the Victoria Falls. A historic British colonial city, its present population was enumerated at 177,393 inhabitants at the 2022 census. It is named after David Livingstone, the Scottish explorer and missionary who was the first European to explore the area. Until 2011, Livingstone was the provincial capital of Zambia's Southern Province.
Alexandre Alberto da Rocha de Serpa Pinto, Viscount of Serpa Pinto was a Portuguese explorer of southern Africa and a colonial administrator.
Barotseland is a region between Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe including half of north-western province, southern province, and parts of Lusaka, Central, and Copperbelt provinces of Zambia and the whole of Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga Province. It is the homeland of the Lozi people or Barotse, or Malozi, who are a unified group of over 46 individual formerly diverse tribes related through kinship, whose original branch are the Luyi (Maluyi), and also assimilated Southern Sotho tribe of South Africa known as the Makololo.
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Sioma District is a district of Zambia, located in Western Province on the west bank of the Zambezi River. The capital lies at Sioma.
Nakonde is a town in the Muchinga Province of Zambia, on the border with Tanzania. It is at the northern end of Zambia's Great North Road. It is the principal commercial and political headquarters of Nakonde District and the district headquarters are located here.
The T2 is a trunk road in Zambia. The road runs from the Tunduma border with Tanzania via Mpika, Kabwe and Lusaka to the Chirundu border with Zimbabwe. The road is the longest route of the country, as it is approximately 1,155 kilometres (718 mi). The route from Mpika to Kafue is a toll road. The route from Tanzania to Lusaka is Zambia's Great North Road and is part of the Tanzam Highway.
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