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.
Sharing the water of the Ganges founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman signed the wide-ranging Indo-Bangladeshi Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Peace on 19 March 1972; as per the treaty, the two nations established a Joint River Commission to work for the common interests and sharing of water resources, irrigation, floods and cyclones control. The Farakka Barrage is a dam on the Bhagirathi river located in the Indian state of West Bengal, roughly from the border with Bangladesh. India uses it to control the flow of the Ganges river. The dam was built to divert the Ganges River water into the Hooghly River during the dry season,