River · Cameroon
Sanaga
The Sanaga is the longest river in Cameroon. It gathers water from the high grasslands of the Adamawa Plateau and empties into the Bight of Biafra, on the Atlantic coast south of Douala.
Picture credit: UJung (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Awah Nadege (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is the Sanaga?
The river starts here: Adamawa Plateau, Cameroon, where the Djérem and the Lom meet.
It ends in the Bight of Biafra, south of Douala.
Countries on the river: Cameroon.
The story behind it
The Sanaga begins where two rivers, the Djérem and the Lom, join on a high, grassy plateau. It then tumbles westwards over rocky steps and rapids into thick rainforest. Near the town of Edéa the water roars over famous falls, and dams there turn the current into electricity for much of Cameroon. Different books give the Sanaga slightly different lengths, because nobody agrees on exactly where the river should be measured from, so the number you read may change from map to map. Fishers paddle narrow canoes between sandbanks and catch catfish and tilapia, while the forests on the two banks are home to different groups of chimpanzees and monkeys. In the rainy season the river swells and floods the lowlands; in the dry months wide sandbars appear and children play on them.
Questions children ask
How long is the Sanaga?
The Sanaga is usually given as 603 km long. Other books list slightly different figures, because experts disagree about where the river really starts.
Which country does the Sanaga flow through?
The Sanaga stays inside Cameroon for its whole course. It crosses the country from the inland plateau to the Atlantic coast.
Where does the Sanaga flow into the sea?
It flows into the Bight of Biafra, part of the Atlantic Ocean, just south of the port city of Douala. Its mouth is a wide maze of sandbanks and mangroves.
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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