Akanyaru River

The Akanyaru River is the main tributary of the Nyabarongo River. It rises in the western highlands of Rwanda and Burundi, flows east and then north along the border between those countries before joining the Nyabarongo River. The lower stretches contain important but unprotected wetlands, which are under threat from human activity.

The Mugere River, a major headwater, rises at an elevation of 2,450 metres (8, 040 ft) in Burundi. The river has sources at about 2,300 metres (7, 500 ft) elevation in the south of Rwanda. Many of the valleys of the higher tributaries are choked by papyrus, which contains seasonal swamp forests. The upstream portion of the river has a catchment area of about 2,650 square kilometres (1, 020 sq mi). The lower course of the river is a belt of permanent wetlands about 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) wide that ends where it reaches the Nyabarongo River. In this 80 kilometres (50 mi) stretch the river drops from an elevation of 1,465 metres (4, 806 ft) to 1,400 metres (4, 600 ft). The swamp belt is fed from the right by lakes Cyohoha North and Cyohoha South. The Burundi side of the swamp belt has about 14,600 hectares (36, 000 acres) of permanent swamp along a 63 kilometres (39 mi) stretch of the river, with the swamp reaching 6 to 10 kilometres (3.7 to 6.2 mi) up the valleys of tributaries.

The upstream part of the river basin has average annual rainfall of about 1,200 millimetres (47 in). Average annual rainfall in the wetlands is about 800 millimetres (31 in). The climate of Rwanda is determined by the Intertropical Convergence Zone, which creates two rainy seasons. One lasts from mid-September to mid-December and the other from March to May. Climate change may be increasing the severity of both floods and droughts. In the 1997-98 El Nino episode a large number of agricultural plantations in the shallows and swamps of the Nyabarongo and Akanyaru river basins were destroyed.

Flows through: Burundi.

River data from Wikidata (CC0); lengths normalised to a common unit.