Page 40 - Discover Botswana 25th Edition - 2025

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OKAVANGO
Previous pages: One of the major rivers from the Angolan
Water Tower, the Lungwevungu River, is a tributary of the
Zambezi River. Image: Jesse Manuel
Top: The sun rises above the misty Lungwevungu River in
Angola. Image: Jen Guyton
Facing page top: Sunset in the Okavango Delta, where the
waters spread through the plains of the Kalahari Desert.
Image: Thalefang Charles
Facing page bottom: A visual map showing the extent of the
Angolan Highlands Water Tower (the darker shaded area).
The Okavango Delta is one of the world’s most important
sanctuaries for biodiversity and is home to the world’s
largest remaining elephant population. This magnificent
alluvial fan attracts thousands of tourists to Botswana
each year. For decades, Angola was cut off from the world
due to a terrible civil war, and somehow we forgot that
the sources of the Delta are in the Angolan Highlands, hidden in the
remote provinces of Huila, Bie, Moxico and Cuando Cubango 1,000km
away. Each year we wait with anticipation for the annual floodwaters
from Angola, without which life in the Delta would not be possible. This
flood has deep cultural and spiritual importance. In 2015, the National
Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project set out to tell the untold story
of where these life-giving floodwaters arise.
The Angolan Highlands are the “water tower” of the Okavango Delta.
In scientific terms ‘water towers’ are mountainous areas that store water in
snow and glaciers, slowly releasing it into rivers and lakes over time. Here
in Africa, we define water towers as high-altitude, forested watersheds
with high water storage capacity, that are more than 500km from the
major rivers they sustain. Water towers provide delayed water release in
the dry season, keeping Africa’s major rivers, like the Okavango, flowing
throughout the year. This has a year-round buffering effect on the long-
term impacts of the El Nino southern oscillation, arguably the world’s
greatest climate phenomenon.