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 emptied eastwards. The Upper Zambezi was captured as well. The Middle Zambezi was about lower than the Upper Zambezi, and a high waterfall formed at the edge of the basalt plateau across which the upper river flows. This was the first Victoria Falls, somewhere down the Batoka Gorge near where Lake Kariba is now. The first European to come across the Zambezi river was Vasco da Gama, in January 1498, who anchored at what he called "Rio dos Bons Sinais" ("River of Good Omens"), now the Quelimane or Quá-Qua, a small river on the northern end of the delta, which