Prelims ask
Direction, delta sea, Lake Tana versus Lake Victoria, no tributary in Egypt.
Africa
Nile
Textbook longest river. Some modern surveys make the Amazon longer. Discharge is not in dispute: the Amazon is far larger.
- Source
- White Nile from Lake Victoria (Kagera headstreams farther south). Blue Nile from Lake Tana, Ethiopian Highlands.
- Countries
- Main channel: Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, Egypt. Blue Nile: Ethiopia and Sudan. The basin is counted as 11 countries; do not say the main channel itself crosses all 11.
- Direction
- North.
- Mouth
- Mediterranean Sea.
- Length
- About 6,650 km.
- Major tributaries
- White Nile, Blue Nile, Atbara. No perennial tributary joins in the Egyptian desert.
- Delta or estuary
- Arcuate delta.
- Basin
- Exotic river across the Sahara. Aswan High Dam stores the flood. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam sits on the Blue Nile.
- One exam fact
- Most of the water, and nearly all the silt, comes from the Ethiopian Highlands via the Blue Nile and Atbara. The White Nile supplies the steady dry-season base flow.
Mains use
International river: upstream storage in Ethiopia changes a downstream desert agriculture that depends on a foreign headwater.