The Niger River (pronounced /ˈnaɪdʒər/ NYE-jər) is the principal river A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing toward an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including stream, creek, brook, rivulet, and rill; there is no of western Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people (as of 2009, see table) in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.72% of the world's human population, extending about 4,180 km (2,600 mi). Its drainage basin A drainage basin is an extent or area of land where water from rain and melting snow or ice drains downhill into a body of water, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea or ocean. The drainage basin includes both the streams and rivers that convey the water as well as the land surfaces from which water drains into those channels, is 2,117,700 km2 Square kilometre, symbol km2, is a decimal multiple of the SI unit of surface area, the square metre, one of the SI derived units. 1 km2 is equal to: (817,600 sq mi The square mile is an imperial and US unit of measure for an area equal to the area of a square of one statute mile. It should not be confused with miles square, which refers to the number of miles on each side squared. For instance, 20 miles square (20 × 20 miles) is equal to 400 square miles) in area.[1] Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in southeastern Guinea Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea (Guinée française), it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbor Guinea-Bissau. Conakry is the capital, the seat of the national government, and the largest city. It runs in a crescent through Mali Mali, officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with a population more than 14 million. Its capital is, Niger Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east. Niger covers a land area of almost 1,270,000 km2, over 80 percent of which is covered by the, on the border with Benin Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located. The capital of Benin is Porto-Novo, but the seat of government is located in the and then through Nigeria Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising thirty-six states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in the north. Its coast in the south lies on, discharging through a massive delta A delta is a landform that is created at the mouth of a river where that river flows into an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, reservoir, flat arid area, or another river. Deltas are formed from the deposition of the sediment carried by the river as the flow leaves the mouth of the river. Over long periods of time, this deposition builds the, known as the Niger Delta The Niger Delta, the delta of the Niger River in Nigeria, is a densely populated region sometimes called the Oil Rivers because it was once a major producer of palm oil. The area was the British Oil Rivers Protectorate from 1885 until 1893, when it was expanded and became the Niger Coast Protectorate of the Oil Rivers, into the Gulf of Guinea The Gulf of Guinea is the part of the Atlantic Ocean west of Africa. The intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian is in the gulf in the Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106,400,000 square kilometres , it covers approximately twenty percent of the Earth's surface and about twenty-six percent of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek mythology, making the Atlantic the ". The Niger is the third-longest river in Africa, exceeded only by the Nile The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world and the Congo River The Congo River is the largest river in Western Central Africa. Its overall length of 4,700 km (2,920 mi) makes it the second longest in Africa (after the Nile) (also known as the Zaïre River). Its main tributary A tributary or affluent is a stream or river which flows into a main stem river. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea, ocean, or lake. Tributaries and the mainstem river serve to drain the surrounding drainage basin of its surface water and groundwater by leading the water out into an ocean or some other large body of water is the Benue River The Benue River is the major tributary of the Niger River. The river is approximately 1,400 km long and is almost entirely navigable during the summer months. As a result, it is an important transportation route in the regions through which it flows.
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Etymology
Different African languages have a variety of names for the river. The Niger is still called Jeliba or Joliba "great river" in Manding The Manding languages are a fairly mutually intelligible group of dialects or languages in West Africa, belonging to the Mande languages. Their best-known members are Bambara , Mandinka (the main language of Gambia), Maninka (or Malinké, a major language of Guinea), and Dioula (Dyula or Jula) (an important language of the northern Côte d'Ivoire, Isa Ber "big river" in Songhay, and Oya, a Yoruba River Niger goddess. A good possibility for a source of "Niger" remains the Tuareg phrase gher n gheren "river of rivers", shortened to ngher, a local name used along the middle reaches of the river around Timbuktu Timbuktu (Koyra Chiini: Tumbutu; French: Tombouctou) is a city in Tombouctou Region, in the West African nation of Mali. It was made prosperous by the tenth mansa of the Mali Empire, Mansa Musa. It is home to Sankore University and other madrasas, and was an intellectual and spiritual capital and centre for the propagation of Islam throughout. As Tuareg is a Berber language Tarifit C. Morocco Tamazight Tashelhiyt Tamasheq which traveled from the Mediterranean basin with the Tuareg in the 10th century, it provides a linguistic link between the two regions.
Some Medieval and late Classical European Europe is one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus region (Specification of borders) and the Black Sea to the southeast. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean and maps A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes used the name "Niger" applied only to the middle reaches of the river, in modern Mali, while Quorra or Kworra was used for the lower reaches in modern Nigeria. The name Niger was extended to cover the entire river on maps once Europeans realized that these were one and the same. It is worth mentioning that the Tabula Peutingeriana The Tabula Peutingeriana is an itinerarium showing the cursus publicus, the road network in the Roman Empire. The original map of which this is a unique copy was last revised in the fourth or early fifth century. It covers Europe, parts of Asia (Persia, India) and North Africa. The map is named after Konrad Peutinger, a German 15–16th-century records a Flumen Girin ("River Girin") with the remark Hoc flumen quidam Grin vocant, alii Nilum appellant; dicitur enim sub terra Etyopium in Nylum ire Lacum,[2] "This river which some are naming Grin is called Nile by others, for it is said to flow under the ground of Ethiopia [i.e. Africa] into the Nile Lake".
When European colonial powers began to send ships along the West coast of Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Senegal River The Senegal River, or Sénégal Fleuve, considered a sweet water river, is a 1,790 km long river in West Africa, that forms the border between Senegal and Mauritania. It was called Bambotus by Pliny the Elder (from Phoenician "behemoth" for hippopotamus) and Nias by Claudius Ptolemy. It was visited by Hanno the Carthaginian around 450 BC was often postulated to be part of the Niger. The Niger Delta The Niger Delta, the delta of the Niger River in Nigeria, is a densely populated region sometimes called the Oil Rivers because it was once a major producer of palm oil. The area was the British Oil Rivers Protectorate from 1885 until 1893, when it was expanded and became the Niger Coast Protectorate, pouring into the Atlantic through mangrove swamps and thousands of tributaries along more than a hundred miles, was incorrectly identified by Europeans as coastal wetlands. It was only with the 18th century visits of Mungo Park Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of the African continent. He was credited as being the first Westerner to encounter the Niger River, who travelled down the Niger River and visited the great Sahelian empires of his day, that Europeans correctly identified the course of the Niger. The name, even when Park and others reported its name correctly from local guides, persisted in the West as Niger.
The modern nations of Nigeria Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising thirty-six states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in the north. Its coast in the south lies on and Niger Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east. Niger covers a land area of almost 1,270,000 km2, over 80 percent of which is covered by the take their names from the river, marking contesting national claims by colonial powers of the "Upper", "Lower" and "Middle" Niger river basin during the Scramble for Africa The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa, resulted in occupation and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between the 1880s and the First World War in 1914 at the end of the 19th century.
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It is often assumed, without evidence, that Niger derives from the Latin Latin or sometimes Roman is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native speakers, a small number of scholars can fluently speak it and it continues to be taught in schools and universities and has been, and currently is, used in the process of word for "black", niger, but it would have been more likely for the Portuguese Portuguese ( português or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that grew from the Latin descended Galician-Portuguese language that was spoken in the mediaeval Kingdom of Galicia; whose territory is now divided between northern Portugal, Galicia and Asturias. It also absorbed influences from the Latin and Arabic languages spoken in the areas explorers who first wrote this name on their maps to have used the Portuguese word, negro, as they did elsewhere in the world. In any case the Niger is not a blackwater river A blackwater river is a river with a deep, slow-moving channel that flows through forested swamps and wetlands. As vegetation decays in the water, tannins are leached out, resulting in transparent, acidic water that is darkly stained, resembling tea or coffee. Most major blackwater rivers are in the Amazon River system and the Southern United, which was the motivation for all other rivers that were called black. (See Rio Negro Rio Negro is the largest left tributary of the Amazon and the largest blackwater river in the world. It has its sources along the watershed between the Orinoco and the Amazon basins, and also connects with the Orinoco by way of the Casiquiare canal. In Colombia, where the sources are located, it is called the Guainía River. Its main affluent is.) Some have rationalized that 'black' may have referred to the color of the people living on the river, but this did not happen to any other river in Africa. Therefore it would seem that the similarity between the name Niger and the Latin word niger is either coincidence, or that knowledge of Latin influenced the spelling of an indigenous name like ngher.[citation needed]
Geography
The great bend of the Niger River, seen from space, creates a green arc through the brown of the Sahel The Sahel is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition between the Sahara desert in the North and the Sudanian savannas in the south. It stretches across the north of the African continent between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea. The Sahel covers parts of the countries of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, and Savanna. The green mass on the left is the Inner Niger Delta, and on the far left are tributaries of the Senegal River The Senegal River, or Sénégal Fleuve, considered a sweet water river, is a 1,790 km long river in West Africa, that forms the border between Senegal and Mauritania. It was called Bambotus by Pliny the Elder (from Phoenician "behemoth" for hippopotamus) and Nias by Claudius Ptolemy. It was visited by Hanno the Carthaginian around 450 BC. Mud houses on the center island at Lake Debo, a wide section of the Niger RiverThe Niger River is a relatively "clear" river, carrying only a tenth as much sediment as the Nile The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world because the Niger's headlands are located in ancient rocks that provide little silt Silt is granular material of a grain size between sand and clay derived from soil or rock. Silt may occur as a soil or as suspended sediment in a surface water body. It may also exist as soil deposited at the bottom of a water body.[3] Like the Nile, the Niger floods yearly; this begins in September, peaks in November, and finishes by May.[3]
An unusual feature of the river is the Inner Niger Delta, which forms where its gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar field is a vector field which points in the direction of the greatest rate of increase of the scalar field, and whose magnitude is the greatest rate of change suddenly decreases.[3] The result is a region of braided streams, marshes In geography, a marsh, or morass, is a type of wetland that is subject to frequent or continuous flood. Typically the water is shallow and features grasses, rushes, reeds, typhas, sedges, and other herbaceous plants, and lakes the size of Belgium Belgium (pronounced /ˈbɛldʒəm/ , BEL-jəm), officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a state in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, as well as those of several other major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres (11,787 sq mi), and it; the seasonal floods make the Delta extremely productive for both fishing Fishing is the activity of catching fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping and agriculture Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and stratified societies. The study of agriculture is known as.[4]
The river 'loses' nearly two-thirds of its potential flow in the Inner Delta between Ségou Ségou is a city in south-central Mali, lying 235 kilometres (146 mi) northeast of Bamako on the River Niger, in the region of Ségou. It was founded by the Bozo people in 1620, on a site about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from the present town. With 100,000 inhabitants, it is the third largest city in Mali and Timbuktu Timbuktu (Koyra Chiini: Tumbutu; French: Tombouctou) is a city in Tombouctou Region, in the West African nation of Mali. It was made prosperous by the tenth mansa of the Mali Empire, Mansa Musa. It is home to Sankore University and other madrasas, and was an intellectual and spiritual capital and centre for the propagation of Islam throughout due to seepage and evaporation. All the water from the Bani River, which flows into the Delta at Mopti, does not compensate for the 'losses'. The average 'loss' is estimated at 31 km3/year, but varies considerably between years.[5] The river is then joined by various tributaries, but also loses more water due to evaporation. The quantity of water entering Nigeria measured in Yola was estimated at 25 km3/year before the 1980s and at 13.5 km3/year during the 1980s. The most important tributary of the Niger in Nigeria is the Benue River The Benue River is the major tributary of the Niger River. The river is approximately 1,400 km long and is almost entirely navigable during the summer months. As a result, it is an important transportation route in the regions through which it flows which merges with the river at Lokoja in Nigeria. The total volume of tributaries in Nigeria is six times higher than the inflow into Nigeria, with a flow near the mouth of the river standing at 177.0 km3/year before the 1980s and 147.3 km3/year during the 1980s.[5]
The Niger takes one of the most unusual routes of any major river, a boomerang A boomerang is a flying tool with a curved shape used as a weapon or for sport. Although it is usually thought of as a wooden device, modern boomerangs used for sport are often made from carbon fibre-reinforced plastics or other high-tech materials. Historically, boomerang-like devices have also been made from bones. Boomerangs come in many shapes shape that baffled European geographers for two millennia. Its source is just 240 km (150 mi) inland from the Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106,400,000 square kilometres , it covers approximately twenty percent of the Earth's surface and about twenty-six percent of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek mythology, making the Atlantic the ", but the river runs away from the sea into the Sahara Desert The Sahara is the world's largest non-arctic desert, and technically the world's third largest desert. At over 9,000,000 square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi), it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as the United States or the continent of Europe. The desert stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean, then takes a sharp right turn near the ancient city of Timbuktu Timbuktu (Koyra Chiini: Tumbutu; French: Tombouctou) is a city in Tombouctou Region, in the West African nation of Mali. It was made prosperous by the tenth mansa of the Mali Empire, Mansa Musa. It is home to Sankore University and other madrasas, and was an intellectual and spiritual capital and centre for the propagation of Islam throughout (Tombouctou) and heads southeast to the Gulf of Guinea.
This strange geography apparently came about because the Niger River is two ancient rivers joined together. The upper Niger, from the source past the trading city of Timbuktu to the bend in the current river, once emptied into a now-gone lake, while the lower Niger started in hills near that lake and flowed south into the Gulf of Guinea. As the Sahara dried up in 4000–1000 BC, the two rivers altered their courses and hooked up.[citation needed] This explanation is generally accepted, although some geographers disagree.[citation needed]
The northern part of the river, known as the Niger bend, is an important area because it is the closest major river and source of water to that part of the Sahara desert. This made it the focal point of trade across the western Sahara, and the centre of the Sahelian kingdoms of Mali and Gao.
The surrounding Niger River Basin is one of the distinct physiographic sections of the Sudan province, which in turn is part of the larger African massive physiographic division.
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zubair
Wed, 19 May 2010 22:36:07 GM
Their destination was, first, the newly conquered city of Gao, on the . Niger River. . From there, they turned toward another metropolis just added to the Mali Empire, one surrounded by unrelenting dunes, a fabled oasis city on which Mansa ...
