Possible alternate routes of the Niger?

[Avskygod0]

I was wondering what would happen if a earthquake or a large landslide happened and blocked of the Niger from it's OTL path. Where would it go? Maybe if there is a way to get it across the Sahara and into the Mediterranean what would be the consequences?

 

[Chrzęścimir]

Okavango Delta is one of most probably suggestive examples.

 

[Avskygod0]

Okavango Delta is one of most probably suggestive examples.

It goes all the way there or ends up like that in a desert? Because if it goes all the way down there it will be very weird being so close to the Congo and the Niles nearby

 

[Lord Grattan]

I was wondering what would happen if a earthquake or a large landslide happened and blocked of the Niger from it's OTL path. Where would it go? Maybe if there is a way to get it across the Sahara and into the Mediterranean what would be the consequences?

Without a series of earthquakes of a magnitude not known to have occurred in that part of the world during the several hundred thousand years or the sudden eruption of long-dead volcanoes or several multi-megaton blasts, what you're wondering about is not going to happen. There's a reason why the Niger has a boomerang shape; it's because the Sahel, to its north is at a higher elevation, and water doesn't naturally go up hill. All that would realistically happen if the Niger were blocked, would be massive flood in this area:

The Guinean forest-savanna mosaic covers an area of 673,600 square kilometers (260,100 sq mi), extending from western Senegal to eastern Nigeria, and including portions of Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, and Benin. The Cameroon Highlands of eastern Nigeria and Cameroon separate the Guinean forest-savanna mosaic from the Northern Congolian forest-savanna mosaic, which lies to the east. The Dahomey Gap is a region of Togo and Benin where the forest-savanna mosaic extends to the coast, and separates the Upper Guinean forests of Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, and Ghana from the Lower Guinean forests of Nigeria and Cameroon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinean_forest-savanna_mosaic

 

[Avskygod0]

Without a series of earthquakes of a magnitude not known to have occurred in that part of the world during the several hundred thousand years or the sudden eruption of long-dead volcanoes or several multi-megaton blasts, what you're wondering about is not going to happen. There's a reason why the Niger has a boomerang shape; it's because the Sahel, to its north is at a higher elevation, and water doesn't naturally go up hill. All that would realistically happen if the Niger were blocked, would be massive flood in this area:

Good point i guess

 

[Simreeve]

Before the true route of the Niger (and the surrounding terrain) became known to Europeans during the 19th century some people thought that it might actually flow far enough east to be one of the sources of the Nile... although Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer who was killed while traveling downstream along the Niger in 1806, had thought that it might be a tributary of the Congo instead.

 

[Avskygod0]

What about it going into lake Chad?

 

[Lord Grattan]

What about it going into lake Chad?

The Jos and Adamawa Plateaus are in the way. A geological POD around 9/8 thousand years ago is required for that to be different.