The Niger River, the third-longest river in Africa (after Nile and Congo), takes one of the most unusual routes of any major river, a boomerang shape that baffled European geographers for two millennia. Its source is just 240km inland from the Atlantic Ocean, in the Guinea Highlands in southeastern Guinea, but the river runs directly away from the sea into the Sahara Desert, through Mali, then takes a sharp right turn near the ancient city of Timbuktu and descends towards southeast through Niger, then on the border with Benin and ultimately through Nigeria, discharging through a massive delta into the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean, after it crossed about 4,180 km.
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