Wanderlust World Wanderlust World There are two main rivers that flow together to become the Nile, or the Nile Proper. These are the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The Atbara is a third river that becomes part of the Nile Proper, but this section carries the least amount of water and is considerably smaller than the other two.
The White got its name from the sediment that gives the river a white cloudy look. Roughly 15 percent of the Nile's total water comes from the White Nile. It begins at the Equatorial Lakes Region of Africa, which is located in Tanzania and Uganda. This portion of the river also provides the steadiest flow of water because it is not governed by a wet season.
The Blue Nile is about 850 miles long and flows from Lake Tana in the mountains in Ethiopia all the way to Khartoum in Sudan. The lake floods from June to September, and it is during this time that the majority of the water from the Blue Nile provides flows in the Nile Proper. During this flood, silt, which is very important to fertilization, erodes and joins the river flow. The water in this river accounts for about 58 percent of all the water in the Nile.
The White and Blue Nile rivers converge slightly north of the city of Khartoum. The flow of water here varies throughout the year because of the steady flow from the White Nile and the erratic, seasonal slow of the Blue Nile. When the Blue Nile floods, the part of the river north of Khartoum can become treacherous because of natural rock formations.
Since both the White and Blue Nile rivers flow through various countries, they have caused some political problems. The White Nile loses a lot of water to evaporating because of its slow, meandering flow, so in 1952, during the Egyptian Revolution, the Sudanese government began plans to build a dam to help regulate the flow and reduce the amount of water lost to evaporation. This, however, would reduce the flow of water that would make it to Egypt. Egypt in turn began plans to build a dam that would regulate the overflowing power of the Blue Nile every year. This dam would displace roughly 50,000 people in the Aswan area of Sudan because the area would become flooded. This dam was approved and work began in 1978, but Sudan's political unrest has made completion of the dam impossible. Regulation of the White and Blue Nile rivers is still an issue in this region.