The Strangest Border In the World - Namibia's Panhandle 📍🌍 #geography

If you’ve ever looked at a map of Africa, you might’ve noticed this one country that has possibly the most awkward border in the world: a panhandle stretching almost 300 miles away from its main landmass.

Transcript:
You see, this is Namibia, and there's actually a pretty funny story about why this border exists, but to understand it we need to travel all the way back to the year 1890.

At this time, Germany had quite a few colonies in Africa, including Namibia, except, they noticed a huge problem. You see, for the Germans to travel from this colony to German East Africa, they needed to take this extremely long voyage all the way around the African Continent. However, they realized that if they could just access the Zambezi river, the trip could be made 100 times easier.

The thing is, the only way to access the river was by going through Britain’s territory, and since Germany couldn't just wander into another country, they decided it would be a great idea for them to trade their island of Zanzibar to get this strip of land.

However, in making this Trade, what the Germans failed to realize was that this river that they thought was going to connect their two colonies was actually split down the middle by the largest waterfall in the world, making it physically impossible to traverse. The British, on the other hand, had known this for years, and decided to trade this land with the Germans anyways, knowing it would be completely useless to them.

#shorts #geography

[Douglas_]

“And since Germany couldn’t just wander into another country” that’s ironic

[athulrizwan]

Europe borders : 1000 years of war
african borders : that's a funny story

[imranchaudhary]

By the time germans found out that there's a waterfall in the river, it was more than 28 days and they couldn't return the item to get a refund.

[thalamick]

Britain when asked about the waterfall afterwards: I was just a businessman, doing business

[markmh]

Germans rarely make mistakes. But when they do, theirs are world class! 😄

[ModernDayRenaissanceMan]

This totally didn't make Germany mad and they definitely didn't harbor any ill will. Germany and Britain would become great friends in the 20th century

[SpideyWasTaken]

Germany: We'll give you some islands for access to the river

Britain: We doing a little trolling

[mxx]

That border gets even weirder if you zoom in. The eastern edge of Namibia ends where the Zambezi River and Chobe River meet. Zambia owns the whole north shore of the Zambezi. The Chobe is split, with Namibia owning the north shore and Botswana owning the Chobe's south shore. But once the two rivers meet, Botswana gets a tiny 200m strip of the Zambezi's south shore (which only exists for a bridge over the river from Botswana into Zambia), and then Zimbabwe's border takes over the rest of the Zambezi's south shore. So it's _kind of_ a Four Corners, except Namibia and Zimbabwe don't actually touch because of that tiny strip of Botswana.

To complicate things even further, once the river shores are split only between Zambia and Zimbabwe to the east of the bridge, the border also splits several islands in the Zambezi River down the middle instead of going around them.

[amonjr_]

Proud Namibian 🇳🇦 here, glad we got that part, , the map looks perfect now

[Jstods]

Thats why Germany went on a villain ark

[LBrisk]

The poor person who discovered the waterfall first

Edit: I KNOW AFRICANS WERE THERE FIRST. My comment was about the Germans who didn’t know it was there.

[suidwes]

That part is the Caprivi, most beautiful part of Namibia. Love my country🙏❤️

[ceciliaschmidt]

As a Namibian, this is just something most of us are tought in school. Thanks for choosing our country's history!

[jordan_._turner]

I'm actually from Namibia, and I had no idea this was the reason 😂 you learn something from the internet than in school indeed..
The "panhandle" is the Caprivi Strip, which is about 400km long I think..

[JC_JN]

"we have been tricked, we have been backstabbed, and we've quite possibly been bamboozled"
- Germany, 1890

[Yb.Shorty]

I'm proudly frm here🇳🇦 I'm just glad our country was actually mentioned in a video for once no one seems to know southern Africa countries other than South africa😭

[PurevbaatarBadamdorj]

The german who discovered the waterfall first: ScheeEiißee!!!

[AndreHurter]

Namibia 🇳🇦✨🤯
As a Namibian I also wondered why we have that weird border. Thanks for explaining 🙏

[karimcalled]

“Since Germany couldn’t wander into another country”
…Because Germany didn’t wander into Namibia uninvited either

[ELCRYT]

I still love my home country NAMIBIA FOR LIFE🤍❤️💛💚