Zambezi - Transport

Transport

The river is frequently interrupted by rapids and so has never been an important long-distance transport route. David Livingstone's Zambezi Expedition attempted to open up the river to navigation by paddle steamer, but was defeated by the Cahora Bassa rapids. Along some stretches, it is often more convenient to travel by canoe along the river rather than on the unimproved roads which are often in very poor condition due to being regularly submerged in flood waters, and many small villages along the banks of the river are only accessible by boat. In the 1930s and 40s a paddle barge service operated on the stretch between the Katombora Rapids, about 50 kilometres (31 mi) upstream from Livingstone, and the rapids just upstream from Katima Mulilo. However, depending on the water level, boats could be paddled through—Lozi paddlers, a dozen or more in a boat, could deal with most of them—or they could be pulled along the shore or carried around the rapids, and teams of oxen pulled barges 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) over land around the Ngonye Falls.

Road, rail and other crossings of the river, once few and far between, are proliferating. They are, in order from the source:

• Cazombo road bridge, Angola, bombed in the civil war and not yet reconstructed
• Chinyingi suspension footbridge near the town of Zambezi, a 300-metre (980 ft) footbridge built as a community project
• Katima Mulilo road bridge, 900 metres (3,000 ft), between Namibia and Sesheke in Zambia, opened 2004, completing the Trans–Caprivi Highway connecting Lusaka in Zambia with Walvis Bay on the Atlantic coast
• Kazungula Bridge—in August 2007 a deal was announced to replace the Kazungula Ferry, one of the largest river ferries in Southern Africa, with a road bridge where the river is 430 metres (1,410 ft) wide
• Victoria Falls Bridge (road and rail), the first to be built, completed in April 1905 and initially intended as a link in Cecil Rhodes' scheme to build a railway from Cape Town to Cairo: 250 metres (820 ft) long
• Kariba Dam carries the paved Kariba/Siavonga highway across the river

• Otto Beit Bridge at Chirundu, road, 382 metres (1,253 ft), 1939
• Second Chirundu Bridge, road, 400 metres (1,300 ft), 2002
• Cahora Bassa Dam is in a remote area and does not carry a highway across the river
• Tete Suspension Bridge, 1-kilometre (1,000 m) road bridge (1970s)
• Dona Ana Bridge, originally railway but converted to single-lane road, (1935), the longest at 3 kilometres (1.9 mi), since late 2009 it is again a railway bridge, passenger and freight trains are again running across it and from 2011 on the railway line over this bridge may convey several million of tonnes of Tete coal to the port of Beira.
• Caia Bridge—construction started in 2007 of a 2.3-kilometre (1.4 mi) road bridge to replace the Caia ferry, which, with Kazungula, is the largest ferry across the river

There are a number of small pontoon ferries across the river in Angola, western Zambia, and Mozambique, notably between Mongu and Kalabo. Above Mongu in years following poor rainy seasons the river can be forded at one or two places. In tourist areas, such as Victoria Falls and Kariba, short-distance tourist boats take visitors along the river.