Kazungula (the near-quadripoint)

At Kazungula, four African countries come within a few hundred meters of one another in the middle of the Zambezi River. It is the closest thing the world has to a quadripoint, a spot where four nations meet, but not quite. Instead, Botswana and Zambia share what may be the shortest border between two countries anywhere, a sliver of river roughly 150 meters long, squeezed between two tripoints with Namibia and Zimbabwe. For decades that tiny frontier was crossed only by rickety pontoon ferries. Since 2021 a sleek curved bridge has spanned it, and the bend in the bridge exists precisely to avoid straying over the neighbors' borders.

Kazungula lies where the Chobe River flows into the Zambezi, about 70 kilometers upstream of Victoria Falls. Namibia's Caprivi Strip, or Zambezi Region, approaches from the west, Zimbabwe's border comes in from the southeast, and Botswana's northern tip and Zambia's southern bank face each other across the water. Estimates of the Botswana–Zambia boundary range from about 135 to 150 meters, depending on how the river channel is measured, and the exact lines in the river were long debated. The Kazungula Bridge is 923 meters long, carries a single railway track between its road lanes, and connects one-stop border posts on each bank. Towns named Kazungula sit on both the Botswana and Zambia sides, serving trucks bound for the Copperbelt and Congo.

The tangle traces to colonial bargaining, above all the 1890 Anglo-German agreement that gave Germany the Caprivi Strip as a corridor to the Zambezi, and to later Anglo-Portuguese and British colonial lines that met at the confluence. For years, some maps and officials questioned whether Botswana and Zambia touched at all. Botswana and Zambia agreed to build a bridge in 2007, partly after an overloaded truck capsized off a ferry in 2003 and drowned 18 people. The bridge, costing about 259 million US dollars, opened on 10 May 2021. It is now a link in the North–South Corridor, letting freight between southern Africa and the Copperbelt bypass Zimbabwe and cutting waits that once stretched for days.

• Botswana
  Diamonds, the Kalahari, and the watery miracle of the Okavango border of
• Namibia
  Where the world's oldest desert meets the Atlantic border of
• Zambia
  Copper, the Zambezi, and the thundering smoke of Victoria Falls border of
• Zimbabwe
  Stone cities, the Zambezi, and a land of dramatic reinvention border of
• Zambezi River
  Africa's fourth river, master of Victoria Falls located on
• Victoria Falls
  The largest sheet of falling water on Earth, where the Zambezi plunges into a chasm near