Lake Mweru

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Lake Mweru
Southern end of Lake Mweru from space, June 1993 (false color)
Coordinates	9°10′S 28°30′ECoordinates: 9°10′S 28°30′E
Lake type	Rift Valley lakes
Primary sources	Luapula River Kalungwishi River
Primary outflows	Luvua River
Basin countries	Zambia Democratic Republic of the Congo
Max length	131 km
Max width	56 km
Surface area	5310 km²
Average depth	7 m
Max depth	37 m
Water volume	37 km³
Shore length¹	436 km
Surface elevation	917 m
Islands	Kilwa Island Isokwe Island
Settlements	Nchelenge Kashikishi Chiengi Pweto Kilwa Lukonzolwa
¹ Shore length is an imprecise measure which may not be standardized for this article.

Lake Mweru (also spelled Mwelu) is a freshwater lake on the longest arm of Africa's second-longest river, the Congo. Located on the border between Zambia and Democratic Republic of the Congo, it makes up 110 km of the total length of the Congo, lying between its Luapula River (upstream) and Luvua River (downstream) segments. It is the second-largest lake in the Congo basin and is located 150 km west of the southern end of the largest, Lake Tanganyika.^[1]

Mweru means 'lake' in a number of Bantu languages, so it is often referred to as just 'Mweru'.

1 Exploration
2 Physical Geography
3 Mweru Luapula Fishery
4 See also
- 4.1 External links
5 References

[edit] Exploration

The lake was known to Arab and Swahili traders (of ivory, copper and slaves) who used Kilwa Island on the lake as a base at one time. They used trade routes from Zanzibar on the Indian Ocean to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika to Mweru and then to the Lunda, Luba, Yeke or Kazembe kingdoms, the last being on the southern shores of Mweru.

Western trade routes went from those kingdoms to the Atlantic, so Mweru lay on a transcontinental trade route. Between 1796 and 1831 Portuguese traders/explorers Pereira, Lacerda and others visited Kazembe from Mozambique to get treaties to use the route between their territories of Mozambique and Angola. The Portuguese must have known of the lake, and the visitors only had to walk to higher ground about 5 km north of Kazembe's Kanyembo capital to see the lake 10 km distant. However they were more interested in trade routes than discovery, they had approached from the south and their movements were restricted by Mwata Kazembe, and they did not provide an account of it. Explorer and missionary David Livingstone, who referred to it as 'Moero', is credited with its European discovery during his travels of 1867-8.

[edit] Physical Geography

Mweru is mainly fed by the Luapula River, which comes in through swamps from the south, and the Kalungwishi River from the east. At its north end the lake is drained by the Luvua River, which flows in a northwesterly direction to join the Lualaba River and thence to the Congo.

Mweru's average length is 118 km and its average width is 45 km, with its long axis oriented northeast-southwest. Its elevation is 917 m, quite a bit higher than Tanganyika (763 m). It is a rift valley lake lying in the Lake Mweru-Luapula graben, which is a branch of the Great Rift Valley. The western shore of the lake in DR Congo exhibits the steep escarpment typical of a rift valley lake, rising to the Kundelungu Mountains beyond, but the riftt valley escarpment is less pronounced on the eastern shore.

A smaller very marshy lake called Mweru Wantipa (also known as the Mweru Marshes) lies about 50 km to its east, and north of the Kalungwishi. It is mostly endorheic and actually takes water from the Kalungwishi through a dambo most of the time, but in times of high flood it may overflow into the Kalungwishi and Lake Mweru.

Many fishing villages dot Mweru's shores. The main towns on the Zambian side are Nchelenge, Kashikishi and Chiengi, and on the DR Congo side, Kilwa and Pweto. It is home to two inhabited islands: Kilwa Island and Isokwe. The lake has for a long time has been the subject of the Luapula Province border dispute. The area was served only by dirt roads until the main Luapula Province road was tarred to Nchelenge in 1987; the population around the lake has grown, much of it exploiting the rich fishery of the lake.

[edit] Mweru Luapula Fishery

Mweru was noted for its large fine Tilapia, called pale ('par-lay') in Chibemba, which traditionally were dried on racks or mats in the sun and packed in baskets for market.

Commercial fishing on Lake Mweru and the Luapula River was pioneered by Greek fishermen from two neighbouring Ionian islands who settled in Kasenga, DR Congo, on the western bank of the Luapula 150 km up river from the lake in the first half of the 19th Century. They used boats built in Greek style powered by charcoal-fuelled steam engines, later replaced with diesel. They supplied the workforce of the copper mines in Lubumbashi (later the whole Copperbelt) with fish which was packed in ice at Kasenga and transported from there in trucks.^[2]

In recent decades the catch has declined due to over-fishing, and the Tilapia do not reach the size they once did.