West Africa’s great crescent was a puzzle for centuries
The Niger River sweeps about 4,180 kilometres through West Africa, draining some 2,117,700 square kilometres from the Guinea Highlands near Sierra Leone through Mali and Niger to Nigeria’s Atlantic delta. Manding speakers call it Jeliba or Joliba—“great river”; Tuareg say “river of rivers.”
The Niger ranks fourteenth among the world's rivers and third in Africa, behind the Nile and the Congo, and its basin spreads across ten countries and 7.5 percent of the continent. Its source at Tembakounda sits only 240 kilometres from the Atlantic, yet the water heads away from the ocean toward the Sahara before swinging sharply near Timbuktu and running southeast to the Gulf of Guinea. Geologists explain the boomerang as two ancient rivers stitched together: the upper stream once drained into a now-dry lake northeast of Timbuktu until the lower river eroded headward and captured it.
Because its headwaters cross ancient rock, it carries only a tenth of the Nile's sediment. The yearly flood starts in September, peaks in November and ebbs by May. Where the slope suddenly flattens, the Inner Niger Delta spreads into braided channels, marshes and lakes rich in fish and crops, but between Ségou and Timbuktu seepage and evaporation drain away almost two-thirds of the potential flow. The Benue, joining at Lokoja in Nigeria, is the chief tributary.
As the Sahara dried out about 5,500 years ago, people moved to the bend and domesticated yams, African rice and pearl millet, and settlements such as Djenné-Djenno grew up. Trade across the desert enriched the Ghana, Mali and Songhai empires, and Timbuktu and Gao became centres of learning; Islam arrived around the fourteenth century.
Outsiders long misread the river, with Pliny linking it to the Nile and medieval maps calling the lower course the Quorra. Mungo Park reached the middle Niger in June 1796 and died in 1806 trying to prove it joined the Congo; only in 1830 did Richard Lander and his brother follow it to the sea. Nigeria and Niger both take their names from it.
Source: Niger River
