AHC: Nile-Congo-Malawi Canal system

The Nile, Congo, and Zambezi (through Lake Malawi) all drain different parts of the East African Rift Valley. If these waterways could be made navigable, they could connect the Rift Valley to the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans respectively.

The challenge, if you choose to accept it, it to have a canal system constructed which allows continuous navigation between the Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Mediterranean Sea. This canal system must use parts of the Nile River, Congo River, and Lake Malawi/Shire River/Zambezi River. The canal can deviate from these rivers if necessary, but must primarily follow their course.

Please describe the route of such a canal as well as the political and economic conditions that would be necessary to make such a canal both feasible and worthwhile. POD can be as early as 3000BC - ATL civilizations based in the Rift Valley are encouraged. However, the earlier the POD, the more detailed your submission should be.
 
Personally? @NikoZnate once wrote a great TL built around a surviving Atenism that if I remember correctly was far more expansionist and willing to leave Egypt than traditional Kemetic worship.

So I'd suggest a PoD all the way back then - where missionaries effectively act to establish centres of trade and settlement along the Nile to Lake Victoria - a hard trip, and realistically can only be a series of realms than one great Empire. However, introduction of Egyptian construction techniques to the Lake Victoria area, and the establishment of a secure (if long) trade route from Lake Victoria by sea to the Med is a great start. You then have a civilisation that could manage the environmental conditions of Central Africa to their benefit, as well as explore further - finding the Congo and Zambezi.
t
After that, you mainly need them to desire to enter the Congo and Zambezi basins enough to build canals. Canals in themselves are useful for transport, hence the number built in China.

An alternative is to address the risk of water shortage that is at risk with settling Lake Victoria and building canals over this long period of time. In which case you're building canals to move water from the Zambezi to Lake Victoria.

However, here we hit our big problem. We're effectively trying to cross both the Western and Eastern African Rift Valleys. No small undertaking.
 
Personally? @NikoZnate once wrote a great TL built around a surviving Atenism that if I remember correctly was far more expansionist and willing to leave Egypt than traditional Kemetic worship.
Lovely idea, but it would require modern locks to be invented and practical much, much earlier. Also, if you don't have cement, and all the locks have to be built with stone, it's going to be really expensive.
 
Lovely idea, but it would require modern locks to be invented and practical much, much earlier. Also, if you don't have cement, and all the locks have to be built with stone, it's going to be really expensive.

I wonder what the earliest date it would be practical for us to have pound locks invented?
 
That is somewhat counter intuitive. The earlier the POD, the less information we have.

Yes, because we have less information, the poster will have to supply more details out of their own imagination....

Ok, what i really meant was that the earlier the POD, the more history will take place between the POD and the point at which technology will make any sort of canal feasible, and I would like to see submissions which at least sketch out some of that intervening history.
 
Lovely idea, but it would require modern locks to be invented and practical much, much earlier. Also, if you don't have cement, and all the locks have to be built with stone, it's going to be really expensive.

The trade route using portage roads could be established millenia before an actual canal would be built. I think earlier and more extensive economic development of the Rift Valley is necessary for a canal to be worthwhile, and such economic development probably requires earlier development of non-canal trade routes.
 
Personally? @NikoZnate once wrote a great TL built around a surviving Atenism that if I remember correctly was far more expansionist and willing to leave Egypt than traditional Kemetic worship.

So I'd suggest a PoD all the way back then - where missionaries effectively act to establish centres of trade and settlement along the Nile to Lake Victoria - a hard trip, and realistically can only be a series of realms than one great Empire. However, introduction of Egyptian construction techniques to the Lake Victoria area, and the establishment of a secure (if long) trade route from Lake Victoria by sea to the Med is a great start. You then have a civilisation that could manage the environmental conditions of Central Africa to their benefit, as well as explore further - finding the Congo and Zambezi.
t
After that, you mainly need them to desire to enter the Congo and Zambezi basins enough to build canals. Canals in themselves are useful for transport, hence the number built in China.

An alternative is to address the risk of water shortage that is at risk with settling Lake Victoria and building canals over this long period of time. In which case you're building canals to move water from the Zambezi to Lake Victoria.

However, here we hit our big problem. We're effectively trying to cross both the Western and Eastern African Rift Valleys. No small undertaking.

Imagine this creates a diffusion of Egyptian hieroglyphics across the African continent...
 
Both the Nile and Congo have impassable areas that would require considerable works to make them navigable from the East Rift to the sea. The Nile has the Cataracts and the Sudd, whereas the Congo has famously huge rapids in several areas.
 
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