The White Nile is an African river and one of the two main tributaries of the Nile. In wider sense, “White Nile” refers to the approximately 3700 km river draining from Lake Victoria into the Nile proper. It may also, depending on the speaker, refer to the headwaters of Victoria. It was the Nile river which enabled the ancient Egyptian civilization to become what it was – one of the greatest of ancient civilizations. The river would flood once a year, bringing fertile soil, life giving resources to the desert. The Egyptians revered the Nile, and even had a celestial counterpart for it in the night sky – the Milky Way. The Nile is the longest river in the world, flowing 6695km (4184 miles). There are two main rivers which flow from the south into what is referred to as the Nile Proper, the Blue Nile, and the White Nile. The White Nile is the longer of the tributaries, but the Blue Nile is the main source of water and fertile soil. A third river, the Atbara, flows into the Nile just north of Khartoum in the Sudan but it contributes less than one percent to total water flow. The White Nile is so named because of the light coloured clay sediment suspended in the water giving the river a light gray colour. The White Nile contributes about sixteen percent of the total water flow in the Nile. This doesn't sound like much, however the White Nile as a more steady flow of water which keeps the Nile proper from running dry in April and May, supplying about eighty percent of the Nile's water during these months. The origins of the White Nile are in deep central Africa, as far south as southern Rwanda. The river flows north through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and into Southern Sudan. The White Nile (Arabic: النيل الأبيض, transliterated: an-Nīl al-Ābyadˤ) is a river of Africa, one of the two main tributaries of the Nile, the other being the Blue Nile. 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 the approximately 3700 kilometers (2300 miles) of rivers draining from Lake Victoria into the White Nile proper. It may also, depending on the speaker, refer to the headwaters of Lake Victoria. 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 discovery of the source of the White Nile thus came to symbolise European penetration of unknown jungle.
The river arising from Lake Victoria is known as the Victoria Nile. It arises just outside Jinja. There is a monument at the spot. After Nalubaale Power Station and Kiyira Power Station at the mouth, the river goes through Bujagali falls (location of Bujagali Power Station) about 15 kilometers downstream from Jinja. It then flows north and westwards through Uganda, feeding into Lake Kyoga in the center of the country and then out west. At Karuma Falls, the river sweeps under Karuma Bridge (2°14′45.40″N 32°15′9.05″E) at the southeastern corner of Murchison Falls National Park. During much of the insurgency of the Lord's Resistance Army, Karuma Bridge, built in 1963 to help the cotton industry, was the key stop on the way to Gulu, where vehicles would gather in convoy before being provided with a military escort for the final run north. In 2009, the Government of Uganda announced plans to construct a 750MW hydropower project several kilometers north of the bridge, which is scheduled for completion in 2015.[2]. The World Bank had approved to fund a smaller 200MW power plant but Uganda opted for a bigger project, which the Ugandans will fund internally.[citation needed] Just before entering Lake Albert, the river is compressed into a passage seven meters in width at Murchison Falls, marking the entry into the Western branch of the Great Rift Valley. The river flows into Lake Albert opposite the Blue Mountains in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The river exiting Lake Albert to the north is known as the Albert Nile. The river separates the West Nile sub-region of Uganda from the rest of the nation. While a bridge passes over the Albert Nile near its inlet in Nebbi District, there is no other bridge over this section. A powered ferry connects the roads between Adjumani and Moyo, but navigation of the river is otherwise done by small boat or canoe. The second part is from Lake Nasser, the world's second largest man-made lake. Lake Nasser is where the Nile's waters are held back by the Aswan High Dam constructed in 1970: at which time the Nile's annual floods which had occurred for thousands of years, ceased. The Nile continues northward from the dam for about 805 km (500 miles) to Cairo and on northward to form the Nile Delta composed of silt fifty to seventy-five feet deep from the Ethiopian plateau. The Nile mud is perhaps the most fertile soil on the planet. It is composed of about 0.1 percent Nitrogen, 0.2 percent phosphorus anhydrides and 0.6 percent potassium. image iss002.egypt.nile.delta003.JPG caption - The Delta spans some 22015 sq. km (8,500 sq. miles) and is fringed in its coastal regions by lagoons, wetlands, lakes and sand dunes. The Delta spans some 22015 sq. km (8,500 sq. miles) and is fringed in its coastal regions by lagoons, wetlands, lakes and sand dunes. Throughout the delta there are high points of mounds of clay and silt rising high enough to escape flooding. Egyptologists have found evidence of very early settlements in these areas. Interestingly, there is an ancient Egyptian creation myth of the world having begun on a mound of earth which emerged from the waters. The annual flooding of the Nile had taken place for thousands of years. Waters of the Blue Nile would begin to rise when the heavy rainfall season began in Ethiopia. The floodwaters would reach the Sudan by May.
Heavy rains in Sudan flooded the White Nile between August 3-11, 2003. This pair of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra (right) and Aqua (left) satellites shows the river on June 19 (left) and August 11 (right), swollen from rains. The area between the White Nile and the Blue Nile to the east is dotted with pools of standing water as well. In these images, water is blue, vegetation is bright green, naturally bare soil and low vegetation are tan and drab green, and clouds are light blue and white. The flooding has displaced 13,000 people, leaving more than 3,000 homeless, and destroying crops. White Nile river, one of the chief tributaries of the Nile, E Africa. The name is sometimes used for the 600 mi (970 km) long section of the river known as the Bahr el Abiad that extends upstream from Khartoum to the junction of the Bahr el Jebel and the Bahr el Ghazal at Lake No, c.100 mi (160 km) above Malakal. In a wider sense it is applied to the entire c.2,300 mi (3,700 km) long stem of the Nile draining from the headwaters of Lake Victoria (Victoria Nyanza). In this wider sense, its remotest headstream is the Luvironza River in Burundi, which flows into the Ruvuvu River and which, in turn, is a tributary of the Kagera River, one of the principal headstreams feeding into Lake Victoria. Known as the Victoria Nile for approximately the next 260 mi (430 km), it flows N and W through Uganda into Lake Albert. It leaves Lake Albert as the Albert Nile and flows north c.100 mi (160 km) to Nimule, where it enters Sudan and becomes the Bahr el Jebel. From Nimule to Rejaf is a zone of rapids. At Juba it leaves the highlands of central Africa and enters the broad Sudan plain; downstream at Bor, it flows through the Sudd, a vast swampy area named after the floating vegetation (sudd) that sometimes hinders navigation. At Lake No it receives the Bahr el Ghazal and continues E to Khartoum, where it joins with the Blue Nile to form the Nile.
