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The Luangwa River is one of the major
tributaries A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drain ...
of the
Zambezi The Zambezi River (also spelled Zambeze and Zambesi) 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 , slightly less than ha ...
River, and one of the four biggest rivers of
Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are t ...
. The river generally floods in the rainy season (December to March) and then falls considerably in the dry season. It is one of the biggest unaltered rivers in
Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a number o ...
and the that make up the surrounding valley are home to abundant
wildlife Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous to game: those birds and mammals that were hunted ...
.


Source and Upper-Middle Luangwa Valley

''Note: distances stated are approximate straight-line distances from source''. The Luangwa rises in the Lilonda and
Mafinga Hills The Mafinga Hills are a plateau covered by hills, situated on the border between Zambia and Malawi, in Southern Africa. These hills are composed of quartzites, phyllites and feldspathic sandstones of sedimentary origin. This plateau has the high ...
in north-east Zambia at an elevation of around 1500 m, near the border with
Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...
and
Malawi Malawi (; or aláwi Tumbuka: ''Malaŵi''), officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northe ...
, and flows in a southwesterly direction through a broad valley. About 150 km from its source it has dropped to an
elevation The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § ...
of about 690 m and becomes a meandering river with a flood-plain several kilometres wide. Over the next 300 km the meanders increase, with many oxbow lakes and abandoned meanders. Near Mfuwe, the river's elevation has dropped to about 520 m, the flood plain is about 10 km wide and the valley reaches about 100 km wide, with a north-west escarpment ( Muchinga Escarpment) about 700 m high, and a south-western
escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. The terms ''scarp'' and ''scarp face'' are often used interchangeably with ''esca ...
about 450 m high. In the dry season some sections, especially in the upper reaches, dry out completely, leaving isolated pools. The upper and middle parts of the valley contain the
North Luangwa National Park North Luangwa National Park is a national park in Zambia, the northernmost of the three in the valley of the Luangwa River. Founded as a game reserve in 1938, it became a national park in 1972 and now covers 4,636 km². Like the South Luangwa ...
and
South Luangwa National Park South Luangwa National Park is in eastern Zambia, the southernmost of three national parks in the valley of the Luangwa River. It is a world-renowned wildlife haven which is known to locals simply as "the South Park."Concentrations of game along ...
s of
Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are t ...
, which are among some of the finest in Africa. The river itself is home to large populations of hippopotami and crocodiles. The world's largest concentration of hippos lives in the Luangwa Valley. In the dry season they are restricted by the shrinking river and pools, and are easily seen especially in isolated pools. In addition to being a source of water, the oxbow lakes and pools increase the biodiversity of the valley in other ways. The hippopotami which live in them feed on land vegetation at night. Their dung feeds some fish and fertilises the pools, increasing fish life which in turn feed crocodiles and birds. In the dry season, the grazing land animals and their predators congregate near the river and pools, and are easily seen. In the rainy season they graze further afield and are more easily hidden in the growth of new vegetation. At about 500 km the valley narrows to about 50 km and becomes divided by a ridge into two parallel valleys, with a tributary, the
Lukusashi River The Lukasashi River (also spelled Lukusashi) is a tributary of the Lunsemfwa River in Zambia. It flows through important game conservation area Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their rec ...
in a 25 km-wide valley to the north-west, and the Luangwa in a 15 km wide valley to the southeast. The river meanders less, and the flood plain narrows. The principal settlement in the Middle and Upper Luangwa Valley is Mfuwe which serves the
tourism Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring (disambiguation), touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tour (disambiguation), tours. Th ...
industry and has an international airport. Very few humans otherwise inhabit the valley.


Lower Luangwa

At 600 km the river abruptly enters a narrow valley between hills rising some 200 m from the broader valley floor, becoming almost a gorge. About 700 km from source the Luangwa merges with its
tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drai ...
the Lukusashi after the latter has merged with the Lunsemfwa River coming from the opposite direction, and turns due south through a steep narrow valley: this is its exit from the Luangwa Rift Valley (see following section). After only 20 km it emerges from the hills into the broad valley of the Zambezi and meanders over sandy flats about 1.5 km wide in a flood plain of 3–5 km wide. It merges with the deeper Zambezi at Luangwa town. The lower section of the river forms the border between Zambia and
Mozambique Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...
.


The Luangwa Rift Valley

This section explains the geomorphology of the Luangwa Valley. It is a rift valley or
graben In geology, a graben () is a depressed block of the crust of a planet or moon, bordered by parallel normal faults. Etymology ''Graben'' is a loan word from German, meaning 'ditch' or 'trench'. The word was first used in the geologic conte ...
forming a south-west extension of the east African Rift, branching off its Lake Rukwa-
Lake Malawi Lake Malawi, also known as Lake Nyasa in Tanzania and Lago Niassa in Mozambique, is an African Great Lake and the southernmost lake in the East African Rift system, located between Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. It is the fifth largest f ...
southern section, and reaching almost as far as Lusaka. The junction is not obvious because it filled with material spewed out from an ancient, extinct volcano. There are at least 20 hot springs, characteristic of a rift valley, in the valley or on its escarpments. The Luangwa flows along four-fifths of the Luangwa Rift Valley to the point where it meets the Lukusashi and the Lunsemfwa which has come from the opposite direction. At one time, millions of years ago, there was no way out and the Luangwa Rift filled with a Rift Valley Lake called the Madumabisa Lake, which rivalled
Lake Malawi Lake Malawi, also known as Lake Nyasa in Tanzania and Lago Niassa in Mozambique, is an African Great Lake and the southernmost lake in the East African Rift system, located between Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. It is the fifth largest f ...
in size. The water of the lake overflowed in a river to the south-west, towards what is now the Kalahari, where it combined with the Okavango, Upper Zambezi, Cuando and
Kafue Kafue is a town in the Lusaka Province of Zambia and it lies on the north bank of the Kafue River, after which it is named. It is the southern gateway to the central Zambian plateau on which Lusaka and the mining towns of Kabwe and the Copperb ...
rivers, emptying into the Limpopo River and flowing to the
Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by ...
. Several geological events combined to produce the current river systems. Faulting produced another graben just to the south of the Luangwa Rift, and running east–west: the Zambezi Rift Valley and the Chicoa Trough. A tributary of the Shire River at the south end of the Great Rift Valley then cut back eastwards through the Chicao Trough and Zambezi Valley, capturing the southerly overspill of the Madumabisa Lake. This tributary became the Zambezi, which over millions of years captured the Kafue, Cuando and the upper
Zambezi The Zambezi River (also spelled Zambeze and Zambesi) 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 , slightly less than ha ...
. Faulting lowered the land between the Luangwa Rift and the Zambezi Rift allowing Madumabisa Lake to drain out into the Zambezi in a channel which became the lower Luangwa River.


The Luangwa as a barrier

The Luangwa Rift Valley and rivers within it form a natural barrier, with a very low population density. This, the steepness of the terrain, and the existence of the wildlife reserves have resulted in no highways crossing the valley between the Lusaka-Kabwe roads in the west and the Isoka-Chisenga road in the north, a distance of about 800 km. The lower Luangwa Valley is crossed by just one road, the Great East Road at the Luangwa Bridge, about 10 km south of the Luangwa-Lunsemfwa confluence.


Further reading

* Camerapix: Spectrum Guide to Zambia, Camerapix International Publishing, Nairobi, 1996. * Terracarta: Zambia, 2nd edition, International Travel Maps, Vancouver, Canada, 2000. * Jean-Jacques Tiercelin et al.
"Source Rocks and Reservoirs in Rift Lake Basins over the Past 300 Ma in Central and Eastern Africa"
AAPG Annual Meeting, Houston, 2002. Accessed 18 February 2007. * A.E. Moore: '"Drainage evolution in south-central Africa since the breakup of Gondwana". '' South African Journal of Geology'', March 2001, v. 104; no. 1; p. 47-68. * J.H. Dumisani: "Seismotectonics of Zimbabwe." ''African Journal of Science and Technology (AJST), Science and Engineering Series'' Vol. 1, No.4, pp. 22–28
“Hot springs in the Luangwa Valley”
''The
Northern Rhodesia Journal The ''Northern Rhodesia Journal'', often referred to simply as "NRJ", was produced between 1950 and 1965, by the Northern Rhodesian Government Printer, to record some of the early history of Northern Rhodesia. It is one of the most important sourc ...
'', Vol 2 No 3 (1954) pp. 65–66. Accessed 26 February 2007.


References

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