River · Botswana
Okavango
Okavango is the longest river connected with Botswana. It carries water from far away in southern Africa into a huge inland delta, where the river ends in sand, reeds and shallow lagoons.
Picture credit: Pavel Špindler (CC BY 3.0) · Pavel Špindler (CC BY 3.0) · Christoph Strässler (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is the Okavango?
The river starts here: Highlands of Angola.
It ends in the Okavango Delta, with no outlet to the sea.
Countries on the river: Botswana.
The story behind it
The Okavango never reaches the sea, and that is exactly what makes it famous. Its water starts as rain in the highlands of Angola, travels across dry country and then spreads out in Botswana into a delta as large as a small nation. The flood arrives months after the rain, in the middle of the dry season, and suddenly hot sand becomes a maze of clear channels, papyrus and islands. Elephants swim from island to island, hippos cut deep paths through the reeds, lions learn to hunt with wet paws and fish eagles call above the water. People glide along in narrow mokoro canoes. At the end everything sinks into the sand or rises into the air. Books give different lengths for this river, because its upper course carries other names.
Questions children ask
How long is the Okavango?
Around 1 600 kilometres are usually given. The figure is not certain, because the upper course in Angola is known by other names and is measured in different ways.
Which countries does the Okavango flow through?
Where does the Okavango end?
It ends in the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana. There is no way out to the sea: the water sinks into the sand of the Kalahari or evaporates in the sun.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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