Luapula River - Wikipedia

Luapula River - Wikipedia
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Coordinates
9°24′50″S
28°31′19″E
 / 
9.41384°S 28.52188°E
 /
-9.41384; 28.52188
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tributary of the Congo River
This article is about the river. For the genus of crickets, see
Laupala
"Luapula" redirects here. For the province, see
Luapula Province
. For the constituency, see
Luapula (constituency)
The Luapula River is the middle stretch in red.
The Luapula (bottom) forms a swampy delta where it enters Lake Mweru (center, in black), as shown in this false-colour NASA satellite image. Blue lines mark the swamp and its islands (9, 10); a dotted line marks the river's floodplain (11). Red dots (1–8) are towns. See note for full legend.
note 1
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
Source and upper Luapula
edit
For wildlife and vegetation at the source of the Luapula, see
Lake Bangweulu
and
Bangweulu Wetlands
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.)
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.
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.
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'.
Valley
edit
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.
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.
Swamps
edit
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 accessible overland during 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.
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.
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.
On the western side of the delta in DR Congo is a broad grassy floodplain covering about 1,600 km
. At the end of the rainy season, the combined Luapula wetlands exceed 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 sq mi).
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.
Human settlement
edit
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Water transport
edit
Before the advent of road transport, people travelled by canoe along the river between lakes Bangweulu and Mweru.
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 1,885 such craft was 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
River crossings
edit
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 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.
The second bridge over the river, the 320-metre (1,050 ft) long
Chembe Bridge
was completed in 2008 to replace the Chembe Ferry.
See also
edit
Congo Pedicle
with map showing the river's course
Luvua River
Congo River
Katanga Province
Notes
edit
Towns in Zambia (1–5): 1 Chiengi, 2 Kashikishi, 3 Nchelenge, 4 Mwansabombwe, and 5 Mwense

Towns in DR Congo (6–8): 6
Pweto
, 7
Kilwa
, 8
Kasenga

Other features (9–11): 9 Chisenga Island, 10 the largest swamp island (in DR Congo), 11 the main floodplain.
The Luapula is not part of the Congo River itself, but some sources
use the Luapula and its tributary, the
Chambeshi
, to measure the furthest length of the Congo River system.
References
edit
Pourtier, Roland and Sautter, Gilles François. "Congo River". Encyclopedia Britannica, 19 Feb. 2024,
. Accessed 8 March 2024
Terracarta/International Travel Maps, Vancouver Canada: "Zambia, 2nd edition", 2000
Blaikie, William Garden (1880):
The Personal Life Of David Livingstone
Project Gutenberg Ebook #13262
, release date: August 23, 2004.
David Livingstone
and
Horace Waller
(ed.):
The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa from 1865 to his Death
. Two volumes, John Murray, 1874.
Google Earth
accessed 2007.
William Lammond:
"The Luapula Valley"
The
Northern Rhodesia Journal
, Vol 2 No 5 (1954), pp50−55. Accessed 16 December 2017.
"Luizi"
Earth Impact Database
Planetary and Space Science Centre University of New Brunswick Fredericton
. Retrieved
2016-04-08
P Master, P. Dumont and H. Ladmirant: "Age Constraints On The Luizi Structure"
64th Annual Meteoritical Society Meeting
. (2001). Accessed 30 March 2007. The Luizi structure can be seen on Google Earth at decimal latitude/longitude 10.16 S, 28.00 E.
Bwalya S Chuba: "Mbeleshi in a history of the London Missionary Society", Pula Press, Gaborone (2000).
NRZAM website: H. C. Marshall: "Water Transport in the Bangweulu Swamps"
The Northern Rhodesia Journal
, Vol III, No 3 pp.189−197 (1957). Accessed 27 March 2007.
Camerapix: "Spectrum Guide to Zambia." Camerapix International Publishing, Nairobi, 1996.
Rivers
of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Congo left bank (south)
Congo
Inkisi
Lomami
Lukaya
Lukunga
Lulonga
Ndjili
Tshuapa
Kasai basin
Kasai
Fimi
Fwa
Kwango
Kwilu
Lubi
Lubudi
Lulua
Lukenie
Sankuru
Congo right bank (north)
Aruwimi
Mongala
Ebola
Mbomou
Ubangi
Uele
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Lualaba
Elila
Lowa
Luama
Luapula
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Luvua
Ulindi
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Yale LUX
9°24′50″S
28°31′19″E
 / 
9.41384°S 28.52188°E
 /
-9.41384; 28.52188
Retrieved from "
Categories
Earth Impact Database
Luapula River
International rivers of Africa
Rivers of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Rivers of Zambia
Lake Bangweulu
Lake Mweru
Miombo
Border rivers
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