Kanyembo is the principal centre of the population on the Mofwe Lagoon, the largest of several lagoons in the Luapula River swamps south of Lake Mweru, in the Luapula Province of Zambia.
Kanyembo lies on the main artery of Luapula Province, the tarred road known as the Zambia Way, linking it to Nchelenge-Kashikishi in the north and Mwansabombwe and Mansa in the south.
The villages lining the edge of the Luapula swamps and the south-eastern shore of Lake Mweru merge into each other in an almost unbroken sequence, as happens with Kanyembo and Shanyemba to its north, so the visitor can scarcely distinguish where one ends and the other begins.
As well as the large mango trees typical of traditional villages in northern Zambia, a notable feature of the Kanyembo area is mature oil palms, which are not native and do not occur naturally elsewhere in Zambia.
Although there is no traditional story of their introduction, they were native to the Lunda Kingdom 300 km west from where the Lunda-Kazembe migrated.