Zambezi Region with the United Kingdom. Leo von Caprivi arranged for the Caprivi strip to be annexed to German South West Africa in order to give Germany access to the Zambezi River as part of the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty. The German motivation behind the swap was to acquire a strip of land linking German South West Africa with the Zambezi River, providing easy access to Tanganyika (Tanzania) and an outlet to the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately for the Germans, the British colonisation of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe and Zambia) stopped them well upstream of Victoria Falls, which proved a considerable barrier to navigation on the Zambezi.
Zambezi term "Sena River" ("Rio de Sena"), a reference to the Swahili (and later Portuguese) upriver trade station at Sena. In 1752, the Zambezi delta, under the name "Rivers of Sena" ("Rios de Sena") formed a colonial administrative district of Portuguese Mozambique. But common usage of "Zambezi" led eventually to a royal decree in 1858 officially renaming the district "Zambézia". The Zambezi region was known to medieval geographers as the Empire of Monomotapa, and the course of the river, as well as the position of lakes Ngami and Nyasa, were given broadly accurately in early maps. These were probably constructed from