Artificial Lakes in Africa

Abstract

A REMARKABLE proposal for the formation of several great lakes in the interior of Africa in order to create cultivable land and stores of hydro-electric power is outlined in a report issued by Science Service, of Washington, D.C. The project emanates from H. Soergel, of Munich. A great dam two and a half miles long about 500 miles from the mouth of the Congo would turn the basin into an inland sea with an area of about 350,000 sq. miles. An outlet by the lower Congo would provide abundant water power or, alternatively, an outlet could be arranged to the north to create a second inland sea centring around Lake Chad, which would drain through existing wadis to the west, north-east and east by a “second Nile” to the Gulf of Gabes in the Mediterranean. This new river would provide irrigation water for vast areas in the French and Italian Sahara. A further suggestion is for a dam on the Zambezi River above Victoria Falls in order to create an inland sea over much of the Kalahari desert. Herr Soergel does not discuss the effect of evaporation on the projected Chad and Victoria. Seas, both of which would lie in almost rainless regions.