Ruzizi River
Sign in to saveAlso known as Rusizi
river through which lake kivu empties into lake tanganyika.
Key facts
- Countries
- DR Congo (DRC), Rwanda , Burundi
- Source
- Lake Kivu
- Location
- border between Bukavu , and Cyangugu , South Kivu, DRC
- Coordinates
- 02°29′27″S 28°53′35″E / 2.49083°S 28.89306°E / -2.49083; 28.89306
- Elevation
- 1,472 m (4,829 ft)
- Mouth
- Lake Tanganyika
- Length
- 117 km (73 mi)
- Average
- 100 m /s (3,500 cu ft/s)
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- transboundary river
- Official name
- Rusizi
- Country
- Rwanda
- Elevation
- 950
- Image
- La Rivière du parc national rusizi.jpg
- Length
- 117
Show 8 more facts
- Commons category
- Ruzizi River
- discharge
- 400
- mouth of the watercourse
- Lake Tanganyika
- origin of the watercourse
- Lake Kivu
- heritage designation
- Ramsar site
- tributary
- Kaburantwa River
- drainage basin
- Congo Basin
- basin country
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Ruzizi (also sometimes spelled Rusizi, French; Rivière Ruzizi; Dutch: Ruzizi Rivier) is a river, 117 kilometres (73 mi) long, that flows from Lake Kivu to Lake Tanganyika in Central Africa, descending from about 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) to about 770 metres (2,530 ft) above sea level over its length. The steepest gradients occur over the first 40 kilometres (25 mi), where hydroelectric dams have been built. Further downstream, the Ruzizi Plain, the floor of the Western Rift Valley, has gentle hills, and the river flows into Lake Tanganyika through a delta, with one or two small channels splitting off from the main channel.
The Ruzizi is a young river, formed about 10,000 years ago when volcanism associated with continental rifting created the Virunga Mountains. The mountains blocked Lake Kivu's former outlet to the drainage basin of the Nile and instead forced the lake overflow south down the Ruzizi and the drainage basin of the Congo.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Ruzizi River” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
On the map
2 mapped locations