Congo River Congo River The great Congo River (also spelled Kongo River and known as the Zaire River; ; ; ) is the second longest river in Africa, shorter only than the Nile, as well as the second largest river in the world by discharge volume, following only the Amazon. It is also the world's deepest recorded river, with measured depths in excess of . The Congo-Lualaba-Chambeshi River system has an overall length of , which makes it the world's ninth-longest river. The Chambeshi is a tributary of the Lualaba River, and "Lualaba" is the name of the Congo River upstream of
Cataracts of the Nile river bed exposed. These distinctive features of the river between Aswan and Khartoum have led to the stretch being often referred to as the Cataract Nile, while the downstream portion is occasionally referred to as the "Egyptian" Nile. The geological distinction between these two portions of the river is considerable. North of Aswan, the river bed is not rocky, but is instead composed of sediment, and far from being a shallow river, it is believed that the bedrock was previously eroded to be several thousand feet deep. This created a vast canyon that is now filled by the sediment, some