Cunene River

Map of the Kunene

The Kunene is a 1207 km ( 750 miles ) long, all year leading water flow between Namibia and Angola in southwest Africa. The Kunene rises to about 1,800 meters in the Angolan highlands of Bié, the wet Lundaschwelle. While he has a variety of rapids and canyons in the 300 km long upper reaches, it flows in the middle reaches practically just before it hits the Great Escarpment just before the Namibian border through a part of the Kalahari Basin. From there to the mouth are found in the Atlantic numerous rapids and waterfalls, the best known and most spectacular are the same Ruacana Falls near the homonymous locality Ruacana and the magnificent Epupa Falls.

The outflow of the Kunene has a pronounced seasonality. After heavy rainfall in the headwaters of the summer the drain in wet years is up to 1,300 million m3, in the dry season only 50 million m3 can be achieved. The flood crest moves downstream during the rainy season and in May reached the lower reaches at Ruacana. In dry years, the highest runoff often reached only about half of the effluent wet years.

The general abundance of water and the constant -flow conditions has repeatedly led to plans for dam projects. During the Kunene is already dammed at Ruacana and thus has the Ruacana cases taken much of your splendor, the planned dam has reached the Epupa Falls both conservationists as well as for the home here Himba fierce resistance, as the construction of dams whose traditional would destroy tribal area.

From Ruacana where the Kunene River meets the Namibian border, the river forms in a westerly direction, the natural border between Angola and Namibia, before flowing into an up to 30 km wide delta in the South Atlantic.

The name of the river is reflected in the Namibian Kunene region as well as in the Angolan province of Cunene.

Until the Tertiary of the Kunene culminated in today's Etosha Pan, which is similar to the Okavango Delta formed an inland delta and the Ekuma Lake at that time. Only after the splitting of the supercontinent Gondwana and the drifting apart of Africa and South America, the Kunene shifted to the Atlantic.