Zambezi Watercourse Commission Mozambique and flowing to the Indian Ocean. The Zambezi basin also includes parts of Malawi and Tanzania. The Zambezi is the fourth largest river in Africa after the Nile, Congo and Niger. The eight Zambezi Basin riparian states that participate in ZAMCOM are Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. ZAMCOM operations are in line with the revised SADC Protocol on Shared Watercourses. The SADC Protocol was adopted in 1995 and by SADC member states, including all Zambezi riparian states, and came into force in 1998. Seven of the riparian states signed the ZAMCOM Agreement on 13 July
Zambezi Floodplain, the most notable feature of the upper Zambezi, but this northern part does not flood so much and includes islands of higher land in the middle. Thirty kilometres below the confluence of the Lungwebungu the country becomes very flat, and the typical Barotse Floodplain landscape unfolds, with the flood reaching a width of 25 km in the rainy season. For more than 200 km downstream the annual flood cycle dominates the natural environment and human life, society and culture. Eighty kilometres further down, the Luanginga, which with its tributaries drains a large area to the west, joins the Zambezi.