Fascinating to consider, but it would be genocide to carry out. Flooding over a million square kilometers would displace enourmous numbers, and drown many isolated people who were not contacted, and end up trapped on shrinking islands.
The impoundment would be about 190 000 cubic kilometers, holding nearly two thirds of all the world's fresh surface water.
It would weigh about 190 trillion tons, 1.9x10^14 kg. This is considerably greater than the mass of the British isles above sea level, and would increase the frequency and severity of earthquakes and volcanoes over a huge part of Africa for thousands of years.
It would bend the entire continent, already at a breaking point just to the east. The Congo basin would sink down considerably, the land hundreds of kilometers from it's rim would raise up slightly.
It would store some 1.4x10^17 joules of potential energy, 5 hundred billion kilowatt hours, roughly similar to the energy releasable from all the nuclear weapons in the world, enough to power a small town for the age of the earth.
The overflow would be a torrent the size of the Congo, but not constrained to any banks. It would fall north from the CAR to Chad, fill that basin, then overflow into the Niger, drastically changing the most populous part of that river's course.
The impoundment would be about 190 000 cubic kilometers, holding nearly two thirds of all the world's fresh surface water.
It would weigh about 190 trillion tons, 1.9x10^14 kg. This is considerably greater than the mass of the British isles above sea level, and would increase the frequency and severity of earthquakes and volcanoes over a huge part of Africa for thousands of years.
It would bend the entire continent, already at a breaking point just to the east. The Congo basin would sink down considerably, the land hundreds of kilometers from it's rim would raise up slightly.
It would store some 1.4x10^17 joules of potential energy, 5 hundred billion kilowatt hours, roughly similar to the energy releasable from all the nuclear weapons in the world, enough to power a small town for the age of the earth.
The overflow would be a torrent the size of the Congo, but not constrained to any banks. It would fall north from the CAR to Chad, fill that basin, then overflow into the Niger, drastically changing the most populous part of that river's course.