Southern Province, Zambia

Southern Province is one of the ten provinces of Zambia and home to its premier tourist attraction, Mosi-oa-Tunya or Victoria Falls, which it shares with Zimbabwe. The provincial capital is Choma, though until 2011 it was Livingstone. The Zambezi River forms the southern border, Lake Kariba lies along the south-eastern edge, and part of Kafue National Park, the largest in Zambia, lies in the north-west. The Southern Plateau holds the largest area of commercial farmland of any province and produces most of the maize crop, while sugar cane and cattle ranching are also important. The Batonga are the largest ethnic group. The Maamba coal mine in the Zambezi valley is the only large source of fossil fuel in the country. At the 2010 census the province had 1,589,926 people on 85,283 square kilometres.