Zambezi River Authority
organization
The Zambezi River Authority (ZRA) is a corporation jointly and equally owned by the governments of Zambia and Zimbabwe.
It is governed by a four-person council consisting of the Ministers of Energy and Finance of each country.
Its primary function is to operate and maintain the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River.
The ZRA was established in 1987 as a successor to the Central African Power Corporation, which had formerly managed power generation and transmission from the Kariba Dam.
Zambezi River
The Zambezi originates in northwestern Zambia, and runs west and then southwest through Angola before reentering Zambia. It flows south and forms part of the border between Zambia and Namibia. After picking up the waters of the Chobe River at the quadripoint where Zambia, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe meet, the river flows east along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, powering the shared Kariba Dam hydroelectric station, before entering 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.
Functions
Functions of the ZRA, as laid out in the acts that created the body, include:
Operate, monitor and maintain the Kariba Complex
Investigate the desirability of constructing new dams on the Zambezi River
Construct, operate, monitor and maintain any other dams on the Zambezi River
Collect, accumulate and process hydrological and environmental data of the Zambezi River
Make recommendations as will ensure the effective and efficient use of the waters and other resources of the Zambezi.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Zambezi River Authority” as organization. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as organization. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8065660. VIAF identifies the subject as 160126172. The Library of Congress control number is n88260842. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Zambezi River Authority”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Zambezi River Authority primary sources, Zambezi River Authority archive and Zambezi research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Zambezi River Authority”?
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- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Zambezi River Authority” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.