AHC: connect the Kongo river to Lake Albert and an African canal

Realised that Lake Albert, thus the Nile River, and the Kongo river, were quite close.

River_Congo.svg

(You can see the northern branch of the river being quite close to the Lake.)

River_Nile_map.svg


With a POD in whenever, have a colonial power(supposedly, Germany, France or Britain) assumedly control both powers(does not need to) and construct the canal, for whatever reason.
 

Deleted member 67076

This is hard. You have to deal with the Albertine Rifts west of the Lake and also the swampy areas surrounding the place, to say nothing of the political differences. I suppose if you were to get France or England or Germany to take control of either places it might be doable, but such a feat would be expensive.
 

Vitruvius

Donor
Wouldn't the bigger problem be the cataracts of the Nile? What's the point of building a canal to the Nile if you can't navigate up or down it to or from Egypt?
 
Railroads could be used to bypass the falls/cataracts on the rivers. This was not an uncommon reason for colonial railway construction since RR's are comparatively expensive to construct.
 
Wouldn't the bigger problem be the cataracts of the Nile? What's the point of building a canal to the Nile if you can't navigate up or down it to or from Egypt?

The design of the canal that I hoped for, really, wasn't really something that needed to reach the coast- it just needed to facilitate trade in the inner reaches of the African jungle, helping "development" and leaving no jungle impossible to colonisation.
 
Railroads could be used to bypass the falls/cataracts on the rivers. This was not an uncommon reason for colonial railway construction since RR's are comparatively expensive to construct.

If we're doing this, wouldn't it just be much simpler to connect the Kongo River to Lake Albert with a railroad?
 
If we're doing this, wouldn't it just be much simpler to connect the Kongo River to Lake Albert with a railroad?

Besides building it (which, being so far from Europe may be no less expensive than building a canal) but then you have to operate it. For the comparatively small volumes of passengers and cargo, a boat is going to be much cheaper to use.
 
Hmm... I tried to look for topographic maps of the Lake Albert area, and didn't find enough quickly enough to be worth while.

The Congo tributary on the map posted comes VERY close to Lake Albert, if I'm reading the map correctly. It would be fun if there were a huge but narrow height of land there (which there seems to be, although surely not narrow ENOUGH), and the best solution was a tunnel to take the canal through the height of land.

Seriously, by the time that Africa has been explored from edge to edge, which this would most assuredly mean, no one is building major new canals any more. It's just not cost effective to do major engineering when RRs are available.

And the huge amount of effort needed to build a canal here would be staggering. Thousands of miles of digging (possibly), probably hundreds of locks. Maybe a tunnel:) For what? What's the economic gain? Why won't a RR be much cheaper and efficient?

Also, what draft animals are you using to pull the barges? Isn't this Tsetse fly territory? Or, if you're waiting for steamboats to be viable, then, again, why not a RR.
 
A canal connecting Lake Albert to the Aruwimi would be about the same length as the Panama Canal, through taller hills and in a far less useful location. I'm not sure how the locales compare in terms of handy potential reservoirs, but I doubt that would possibly make up for the hitherto estimated effort-to-payoff disparity.
 
A canal connecting Lake Albert to the Aruwimi would be about the same length as the Panama Canal, through taller hills and in a far less useful location. I'm not sure how the locales compare in terms of handy potential reservoirs, but I doubt that would possibly make up for the hitherto estimated effort-to-payoff disparity.
The Panama takes ocean going ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific, saving weeks of travel time and shiploads of fuel.

This hypothetical canal would take barges from one part of uneconomic Africa to another.

No comparison, at all.

Besides. Your canal is not from Lake Albert to the Aruwimi, it's from the South Atlantic to the Med/Indian Ocean. There's got to be a thousand miles of excavation done for something like this, even if it's only deepening the river channels. Also dozens or hundreds of locks, etc.


The economics are totally prohibitive. The only reason to build it would be for strategic purposes. Being able to logistically support an empire from one side of Africa to the other would be a ground changer. However, that purpose, if desired, is better handled with a RR.
 
Top