Molopo River

The Molopo River is one of Southern Africa's most important rivers. It stretches for around 970 kilometers and has a catchment area of 367,201 square kilometers, with Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa each owning almost a third of the basin.

The river's source is between Groot Marico and Lichtenburg, and it runs west first, then southwest from there. The Molopo River constitutes a substantial stretch of the border between Botswana and South Africa in its middle course.

The river flows infrequently, and when it does, the water moves at an extremely slow pace due to a gradient of only 0.76 m/km. Floods are uncommon since the Kalahari Desert's enormous sandveld areas on the Namibian side of the basin absorb all of the water from the seasonal rainfall. The flow empties into the Orange River, which it joins downstream of Augrabies Falls National Park at 28°31′02′′S 20°12′46′′E, in the event of unusually heavy and sustained precipitation. It is thought that the last time this happened was almost a century ago.

Length: 970 km (600 mi- shared with Botswana and Namibia)