Stream
Sangha
785 km from source to mouth · Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and Central African Republic.
Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and Central African RepublicFlows into River Congo2nd longest in Republic of the Congo
In numbers
Length
785km
Average flow
2,500m³/s
Basin
213,400km²
Drop
92m
from 380 m to 288 m
Countries
3
The journey
From source to mouth
785 km of river and 6 stops on the way: 5 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 380 m
- 0 kmNola31,923 people
- 1 kmKadeïtributary
- 91 kmBayanga8,920 people
- 280 kmOuesso40,667 people
- 320 kmPokola15,102 people
- 751 kmMossaka21,809 people
- 785 kmRiver Congoat 288 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in the Congo Basin and tributary of the Congo River in Central Africa
At the mouth it carries 2,471 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 1.0 seconds. It drops from 380 m to 288 m, 0.1 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 213,400 km², about the size of OM. 1.5 million people live in it. Highest water: from October to December. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- OuessoLargest city on its banks · 40,667 people
- On the water15 ferry piers, marinas, boat rentals and boat ramps along the river (OpenStreetMap)
- From December to February and from June to JulyThe best months to visit
Sangha, month by month
Highest water: from October to December
Best months to visit: from December to February and from June to July.
From about 1,300 m³/s in the lowest month to 4,600 m³/s in the highest. An estimate: the monthly flow is modelled from the lowest and highest months of WaterGAP (RiverATLAS, 1971–2000) and the rain and snow along the river (WorldClim). Dams change the real rhythm. The chip is the average air temperature; below it, the month's rain.
Plan the trip
Plan the trip: boat trips, a bed by the river, a car
Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.
The basin
Sangha: the basin in numbers
213,062 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 1.5millionpeople live in the basin
- 7/km²people per km²
- 561maverage altitude of the basin
- 1,579mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 24.2°Caverage air temperature
- 14%protected areas
What covers the basin
- 64% Forest
- 1% Cropland
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Along the river
Sangha: what you find on the way
- 1WaterfallsChutes de Lamba
- 2Boat ramps
- 13Ferry piersEmbarcadere Pocola, Embarcadere Ouesso and 11 more
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.6 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Sangha in our other atlases
What our sister atlases know about the waterfalls on this river, the lakes it flows through, the beaches at its mouth, the mountains where it rises and the islands off its mouth.
1mountain at the sourcePeakyas
From space
The source and the mouth, seen from orbit


Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. The glowing line is the river as drawn by RiverATLAS.
Photos
Sangha in pictures
Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
River CongoIn the same basin
Nearby
Rivers nearby
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q239883) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed along the river network from the point given by Wikidata |
| Flow | WaterGAP (RiverATLAS), 1971–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate along the river | WorldClim (RiverATLAS), 1970–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Towns, bridges, dams | Wikidata · CC0; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0 |
| Along the river | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
| Our other atlases | Peakyas — Wikidata · CC0; © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0; HydroLAKES · CC BY 4.0; NOAA OISST |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.


