River
Tekezé River
608 km from source to mouth · Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Sudan, Ethiopia and EritreaFlows into Atbarah River4th longest in Sudan
In numbers
Length
608km
Average flow
140m³/s
Basin
66,800km²
Drop
2,017m
from 2,497 m to 480 m
Countries
3
The journey
From source to mouth
608 km of river and 7 stops on the way: 2 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 2,497 m
- 150 kmBalagas Rivertributary
- 263 kmGiba Rivertributary
- 265 kmAtaba Rivertributary
- 269 kmWari Rivertributary
- 352 kmZarima Rivertributary
- 463 kmAbala25,300 people
- 500 kmHimora46,100 people
- 608 kmAtbarah Riverat 480 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Ethiopia
At the mouth it carries 143 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 17 seconds. It drops from 2,497 m to 480 m, 3.3 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 66,800 km², about the size of LK. 7.6 million people live in it. Highest water: from August to September; lowest: from January to April. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- HimoraLargest city on its banks · 46,100 people
- Kassala Airport (KSL)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 124 km from the city
- On the water1 ferry piers, marinas, boat rentals and boat ramps along the river (OpenStreetMap)
- From October to FebruaryThe best months to visit
Tekezé River, month by month
Highest water: from August to September
Lowest water: from January to April. Best months to visit: from October to February.
From about 21 m³/s in the lowest month to 1,700 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
Tekezé River: the basin in numbers
97,634 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 7.6millionpeople live in the basin
- 78/km²people per km²
- 1,499maverage altitude of the basin
- 786mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 22.8°Caverage air temperature
- 7%protected areas
What covers the basin
- 20% Cropland
- 20% Pasture
- 2% Towns and cities
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
Tekezé River: what you find on the way
- 15Waterfalls
- 1Marinas
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.4 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Tekezé River 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
Tekezé River in pictures
Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
Atbarah RiverTributaries (5)
Also: Giba River, Ataba River, Balagas River, Wari River, Zarima River
In the same basin
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q843308) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed from the source to the mouth 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.



