Intresting facts about Kariba

Kariba is a destination that holds a myriad of fascinations ranging from the history and myths, Nyaminyami, wildlife, surrounding national parks and mountains, dam wall, lake Kariba, and the Tonga culture.

The exceptional district comprises 12 rural wards and 9 urban wards. The constituency has two separate municipalities rural and urban namely Nyaminyami Rural District Council (NRDC) and Municipality of Kariba (MOK).

The resort area was named by Europeans from the Shona name "Kariva" which means a little trap. It is believed that the Italians old not pronounce the word ‘Kariva" correctly hence replaced the letter "v" with ‘bʼ , resulting in a new name Kariba by then.

The trap may be best explained by an incident that took place during the first dam flooding in the early 60s, 11 Italian men were trapped in the concrete wall and could not be removed because it was expensive to do so, making their bodies part of Kariba Dam wall.

The dam wall was constructed in the 1950s and it took about ten years too complete and it was built by an Italian company called Impresit. The dam-wall was designed by French engineer Andre Coyne, a specialist in arch dams by then.

Kariba resort is situated at the site of the hydroelectric dam across the Zambezi River. The hydroelectric power plant is the 6th largest in Africa. It is 128m tall and 579m long and is the largest man-made dam in the world.


The construction of Kariba lake and the dam wall gave birth to significant achievements in the country. Economically, the electricity and tourism sectors do depend on the above-mentioned achievements.