White Nile
A map showing the White Nile and
the Blue Nile in East Africa.
The White Nile (Arabic: النيل الأبيض an-nīl al-'abyaḍ) is a river in Africa, one of the two main tributaries of the Nile, the other being the Blue Nile. The name comes from the clay sediment carried in the water that changes the water to a pale color.[4]
In the strict meaning, "White Nile" refers to the river formed at Lake No, at the confluence of the Bahr al Jabal and Bahr el Ghazal Rivers. In the wider sense, "White Nile" refers to all the stretches of river draining from Lake Victoria through to the merger with the Blue Nile: the "Victoria Nile" from Lake Victoria via Lake Kyoga to Lake Albert, then the "Albert Nile" to the South Sudan border, and then the "Mountain Nile" or "Bahr-al-Jabal" down to Lake No.[5] "White Nile" may sometimes include the headwaters of Lake Victoria, the most remote of which being 3,700 km (2,300 mi) from the Blue Nile.[3]
The 19th-century search by Europeans for the source of the Nile was mainly focused on the White Nile, which disappeared into the depths of what was then known as "Darkest Africa".
The Kagera River, which flows into Lake Victoria near the Tanzanian town of Bukoba, is the longest feeder river for Lake Victoria, although sources do not agree on which is the longest tributary of the Kagera, and hence the most distant source of the Nile.[6]
The source of the Nile can be considered to be either the Ruvyironza, which emerges in Bururi Province, Burundi[7] (near Bukirasaz), or the Nyabarongo, which flows from Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda.[8]
These two feeder rivers meet near Rusumo Falls on the border between Rwanda and Tanzania.
These waterfalls are known for an event on 28–29 April 1994, when 250,000 Rwandans crossed the bridge at Rusumo Falls into Ngara, Tanzania, in 24 hours, in what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees called "the largest and fastest refugee exodus in modern times".
The Kagera forms part of the Rwanda–Tanzania and Tanzania–Uganda borders before flowing into Lake Victoria.