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 Copperbelt are located.

Site

Kafue is at the south-eastern foot of a range of granite hills rising 200 m and extending over an area of about 250 km², and occupies a shelf of land between the hills and the river, just high enough to avoid its annual flood. The town extends along some shallow valleys between the hills. A 400 m wide strip of small farms and gardens separates the town from a bend of the river which is about 300 m wide in the dry season and 1.3 km wide in the rainy season, sometimes inundating a floodplain 10 km wide on the opposite bank, which consequently is uninhabited save for a few small villages or farms on higher ground.

Transport links

The Kafue River's 50 km wide floodplain, the Kafue Flats, is a 240 km long east-west barrier to road and rail connections between the centre of the country and the south. Kafue lies at the eastern end of the floodplain where the river enters the Kafue Gorge and flows down the Zambezi Escarpment into the middle Zambezi rift valley. Consequently it's strategically located at the only place where north-south road and rail can easily cross the Kafue River and squeeze through the gap between floodplain and escarpment. The Kafue Railway Bridge on the Lusaka–Livingstone line is at the south end of the town, and the Kafue Bridge 9 km to south-east carries one of the busiest sections of the Great North Road across the river and brings it through the town, from where it continues 50 km north to Lusaka. In the other direction the road connects to the Zimbabwe border at the Chirundu Bridge, and the main southern highway to Livingstone, Botswana and Namibia branches off it just south of the Kafue Bridge.

Kafue River

The Kafue River is the longest river lying wholly within Zambia at about 1,600 kilometres (990 mi) long. It is the third largest tributary of the Zambezi (after the Luangwa and Shire), and of Zambia's principal rivers, it is the most central and the most urban. More than 50% of Zambia's population live in the Kafue River Basin and of these around 65% are urban.

It has a mean flow rate of 320 m³/s through its lower half, with high seasonal variations. The river discharges 10 km³ per year into the Zambezi River.

Course

Sources

The Kafue River rises at an elevation of 1350 m on the relatively flat plateau just south the border of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 120 km north-west of Chingola in the Copperbelt Province. The area is Miombo woodland on the Congo-Zambezi watershed, with many branching dambos lying 10 to 20 m lower than the highest ground, producing a very gently undulating topography. The river starts as a trickle from the marshy dambos (the Munyanshi Swamp is a tributary) and with little slope to speed up river flow, it meanders south-eastwards sluggishly and within 50 km has the character of a mature river. The area receives about 1200 mm rain in the rainy season, and the river's channel soon reaches 100 m wide with a floodplain of fluvial dambos 1–2 km wide.

Kafue National Park

Kafue National Park is the largest national park in Zambia, covering an area of about 22,400 km² (similar in size to Wales or Massachusetts). It is the second largest park in Africa and is home to over 55 different species of animals.

The park is named for the Kafue River. It stretches over three provinces: North Western, Central and Southern. The main access is via the Great West Road from Lusaka to Mongu which crosses the park north of its centre. Seasonal dirt roads also link from Kalomo and Namwala in the south and south-east, and Kasempa in the north.

History

Kafue National Park was established in 1924 after the British colonial government moved the traditional owners of the area, the Nkoya people of (King) Mwene Kabulwebulwe, from their traditional hunting grounds into the Mumbwa District to the east. Dissatisfaction with the pace of development in Central Province and a lack of benefit from tourism in the park have led to calls from Nkoya leaders to establish a new province in the area which they have proposed to call Kafue Province.

National park

A national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently, there is a common idea: the conservation of 'wild nature' for posterity and as a symbol of national pride. An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and its World Commission on Protected Areas, has defined "National Park" as its Category II type of protected areas.

While this type of national park had been proposed previously, the United States established the first "public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people", Yellowstone National Park, in 1872. Although Yellowstone was not officially termed a "national park" in its establishing law, it was always termed such in practice and is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world. The first area to use "national park" in its creation legislation was the US's Mackinac Island, in 1875. Australia's Royal National Park, established in 1879, was the world's third official national park. In 1895 ownership of Mackinac Island was transferred to the State of Michigan as a state park and national park status was consequently lost. As a result, Australia's Royal National Park is by some considerations the second oldest national park now in existence.

Zambia

Coordinates: 15°S 30°E / 15°S 30°E / -15; 30

The Republic of Zambia /ˈzæmbiə/ is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, neighbouring 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, in the south-central part of Zambia. The population is concentrated mainly around Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt Province to the northwest, the core economic hubs of the country.

Originally inhabited by Khoisan peoples, the region was affected by the Bantu expansion of the thirteenth century. After visits by European explorers in the eighteenth century, Zambia became the British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia towards the end of the nineteenth century. For most of the colonial period, Zambia was governed by an administration appointed from London with the advice of the British South Africa Company.