Some areas of Africa had never been explored by Europeans by the late 1880s. That did not stop colonialists carving up African lands amongst themselves - but it did result is some geographical curiosities like the "Caprivi Strip." We explore the bizarre origins of this peculiar salient, and how its presence has influenced local conflicts beyond colonization.
Category
ЁЯЧЮ
NewsTranscript
00:00 Some say it looks like Pinocchio's nose.
00:02 Others say it looks like a panhandle.
00:04 At one border post, you can enter four different countries.
00:07 But why does the Caprivi Strip exist?
00:10 Its story tells a lot about how colonial era borders divided the African continent.
00:15 Most boundaries in Africa were drawn by colonial powers during the 1884 Berlin Conference.
00:21 The European leaders did not care about ethnic groups, geographic features,
00:25 or historic sites in Africa. Rather, they divided up their spheres of power.
00:30 So what about the Caprivi Strip?
00:32 In 1890, Germany wanted a trade connection between colonies in southwest Africa and east Africa.
00:39 With the Heligoland and Zanzibar Treaty, they gave up rights over Vito land and Zanzibar
00:45 to get access to island Heligoland as well as the Caprivi Strip,
00:49 and access to the Zambezi River for trade.
00:52 But it proved useless because no German official had been there to see the Zambezi River was
00:57 unnavigable due to the presence of Mossi Owatunia, aka Victoria Falls,
01:02 the widest-reaching waterfalls on earth.
01:05 Duh, German colonial ambitions were scuppered.
01:08 Still, the lines were drawn.
01:10 A party in South Africa used the Caprivi Strip for operations against Namibian liberation fighters
01:16 in the 1970s and 80s.
01:18 There was even a brief attempt at secession of local Caprivians in newly independent Namibia.
01:23 The Caprivi is just one example of strange borders that are haunting the continent to this day.