Friday, August 28, 2026 Search My Trip EnglishChinese
World news · travel · culture
Taiwan The Taiwan Times
Taiwan's window to the world

White Nile

The 35th longest river in the world

2,620 km

The White Nile (an-nīl al-'abyaḍ) is a river in North and East Africa. It is the less voluminous, but longer (and wider and shallower), of the two major tributaries of the Nile, the larger being the Blue Nile. The name "White" comes from the clay sediment carried in the water which gives the water a pale color. In the strict meaning, "White Nile" refers to the river formed at Lake No, at the confluence of the Bahr al Jabal and Bahr el Ghazal Rivers. In the wider sense, "White Nile" refers to all the stretches of river draining from Lake Victoria through to the merger with the Blue Nile: the "Victoria Nile" from Lake Victoria via Lake Kyoga to Lake Albert, then the "Albert Nile" to the South Sudan border, and then the "Mountain Nile" or "Bahr-al-Jabal" down to Lake No. "White Nile" may sometimes include the headwaters of Lake Victoria, the most remote of which being 3,700 km (2, 300 mi) from the Blue Nile.

Flows through: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan.

River data from Wikidata (CC0); lengths normalised to a common unit.

Other major rivers

  1. Amazon6,992 km
  2. Nile6,650 km
  3. Yangtze River6,300 km
  4. Bian River5,806 km
  5. Yellow River5,464 km
  6. Paraná River4,880 km
  7. River Congo4,700 km
  8. Mekong River4,350 km