Kazungula

This article is about the town in Zambia. For the Botswana settlement, see Kazungula, Botswana. For other uses, see Kazungula (disambiguation).
Kazungula
Town
Kazungula is located in Zambia
Kazungula
Kazungula
Location in Zambia
Coordinates: 17°47′S 25°16′E / 17.783°S 25.267°E / -17.783; 25.267
CountryZambia
ProvinceSouthern Province
DistrictKazungula District
Kazungula (centre right) on the Zambezi River, before the construction of the bridge. Zambia is on the right; Namibia at the top on the left; Botswana in the middle on the left and Zimbabwe bottom all the way across the bottom of the picture. The Zimbabwe–Botswana border runs only just this side of the ferry pier.

Kazungula is a small border town in Zambia, lying on the north bank of the Zambezi River about 70 kilometres (45 mi) west of Livingstone on the M10 Road.

At Kazungula, the territories of four countries (Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Namibia) come close to meeting at a quadripoint. It has now been agreed that the international boundaries contain two tripoints joined by a short line roughly 150 metres (490 ft) long forming a boundary between Zambia and Botswana, now crossed by the Kazungula Bridge. The ever-shifting river channels and the lack of any agreements addressing the issue before 2000 led to some uncertainty in the past as to whether or not a quadripoint legally existed.[1][2] Thus, Botswana and Zambia share a border of about 150 metres (490 ft) at the confluence of the Chobe River and the Zambezi River, between Impalila Island, the extreme tip of Namibia's Caprivi Strip and Zimbabwe.

The Chobe River, which divides Namibia and Botswana, enters the Zambezi near Kazungula. Kazungula is an important trade destination to both Zambia and Botswana.

  1. ^ Brownlie, Ian; Ian R. Burns (1979). "Botswana-Zambia (Quadripoint issue)". African Boundaries: A Legal and Diplomatic Encyclopaedia. London: C. Hurst & Co. pp. 1098–1108. ISBN 0-903983-87-7.; summarized at African tripoints: Botswana-Namibia-Zambia by Michael Donner / Jesper Nielsen.
  2. ^ Akweenda, Sackey (1997-04-23). "VI: Quadripoint Theory". International Law and the Protection of Namibia's Territorial Integrity. Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. pp. 201–3. ISBN 90-411-0412-7.