The Largest Lake in Africa, and the Other Ones Worth Knowing
Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa at about 68,800 sq km, shared by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. Tanganyika is the deepest. Chad is the one that is disappearing. This piece covers the major African lakes, their countries, their sizes and the tectonics behind them.
Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa at about 68,800 sq km, shared by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. Tanganyika is the deepest. Chad is the one that is disappearing. This piece covers the major African lakes, their countries, their sizes and the tectonics behind them.
The largest lake in Africa is Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria covers roughly 68,800 sq km, which makes it the largest lake in Africa and the second largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, behind Lake Superior. Three countries hold its shoreline: Tanzania has about 49 percent of the water, Uganda about 45 percent, Kenya about 6 percent. The White Nile leaves it at Jinja in Uganda.
For a lake that big, it is remarkably shallow. Maximum depth is around 84 metres, average depth closer to 40. That matters more than it sounds. A shallow, wide lake in the tropics loses enormous volumes to evaporation, so Victoria's level swings with rainfall over the lake itself rather than with river inflow. The Kagera is its biggest feeder and it contributes only a small share of the water budget.
If someone asks you for the largest lake in Africa by volume of water, though, the answer changes. That is Tanganyika.
The major lakes, side by side
Nine names cover almost everything that gets asked about African lakes. Areas for Chad and Turkana move around a lot between wet and dry years, so treat those numbers as approximate.
| Lake | Countries | Approx. area (sq km) | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Victoria | Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya | 68,800 | Largest in Africa; source of the White Nile |
| Tanganyika | DR Congo, Tanzania, Burundi, Zambia | 32,600 | Deepest in Africa (1,470 m); longest freshwater lake on earth |
| Malawi (Nyasa) | Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania | 29,500 | More fish species than any other lake, mostly cichlids |
| Volta | Ghana | 8,500 | Largest reservoir by surface area in the world; Akosombo Dam, 1965 |
| Turkana | Kenya, small part in Ethiopia | 6,400 | Largest desert lake and largest alkaline lake in the world |
| Albert | Uganda, DR Congo | 5,300 | On the Albertine Rift; the Nile passes through it |
| Tana | Ethiopia | 3,000 | Source of the Blue Nile |
| Kivu | Rwanda, DR Congo | 2,700 | Holds huge dissolved methane and CO2 at depth |
| Chad | Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria | 1,500 and falling | Endorheic; shrank by over 90 percent since the 1960s |
Why African lakes come in two very different shapes
Look at a map of East Africa and you see long, thin lakes running north to south, then one big blob in the middle. That is not an accident. The East African Rift splits into two arms, and each arm produces a different kind of lake.
The Western Rift, also called the Albertine Rift, is deep and narrow. Its lakes sit in steep grabens: Albert, Edward, Kivu, Tanganyika, Mweru. Tanganyika reaches 1,470 metres, second only to Baikal. These are old, deep, freshwater lakes with drainage outlets, and they hold species found nowhere else.
The Eastern Rift is different. Its floor is higher, the basins are shallower, and many of them have no outlet. Water comes in, evaporates, and leaves the salts behind. That is why Turkana, Natron, Magadi, Elmenteita and Bogoria are alkaline, some of them fiercely so. Natron can reach a pH near 10.5 and still supports the lesser flamingo, which breeds on its soda flats because almost nothing else can get there.
Victoria belongs to neither arm. It sits in a shallow downwarp between the two rifts, formed when the uplifting rift shoulders reversed the drainage of rivers that once flowed west into the Congo. Water ponded in the sag. That is why it is huge and flat instead of deep and narrow, and it is a common trap in exam questions that ask you to name the rift valley lakes.
Lake Chad is the case study everyone uses
In the early 1960s Lake Chad covered around 25,000 sq km. By the mid-1980s it was down to roughly 1,350. It has recovered a little since, but it is still a fraction of what it was, and the northern basin has dried out completely in some years.
Two forces did it. The Sahel drought from the late 1960s onward cut rainfall sharply across the catchment. Then irrigation withdrawals from the Chari and Logone rivers, which supply about 90 percent of the lake's water, took a large share of what was left. The lake is endorheic and very shallow, under seven metres at its deepest even in good years, so it responds to both immediately.
The consequences are not only hydrological. Fishing collapsed, grazing land shifted, and around 30 million people across four countries depend on the basin. The Lake Chad Basin Commission, set up in 1964, has spent decades studying a water transfer scheme from the Ubangi river in the Congo basin. It has never been built.
The odd ones that show up in questions
A handful of African lakes get asked about for one specific reason each, and that reason is usually all you need to remember.
Lake Assal in Djibouti sits 155 metres below sea level, the lowest point in Africa, and it is one of the saltiest bodies of water on earth. Lake Nyos in Cameroon released a cloud of carbon dioxide in August 1986 that killed 1,746 people and their livestock in the valleys below, a limnic eruption. Lake Kivu carries the same risk on a far larger scale, with methane and CO2 trapped under pressure at depth, though Rwanda now extracts the methane for power. Lake Retba in Senegal turns pink from salt-loving algae.
And Lake Volta is worth a second look, because it is entirely artificial. The Akosombo Dam closed in 1965 and flooded 8,500 sq km of the Volta basin, about 3.6 percent of Ghana's land area, displacing roughly 80,000 people. No natural lake in the world has a larger surface, which is the fact that gets tested.
If you only fix five things in memory, make them these: Victoria is largest, Tanganyika is deepest, Malawi has the most species, Chad is shrinking, Volta is man-made.
FAQs
Which is the deepest lake in Africa?
Lake Tanganyika, at about 1,470 metres. It is the second deepest lake in the world after Lake Baikal in Russia, and it also holds the second largest volume of fresh water of any lake on earth.
Which African lake is the source of the Nile?
Two lakes feed the Nile. Lake Victoria releases the White Nile at Jinja in Uganda, and Lake Tana in the Ethiopian highlands is the source of the Blue Nile. The two branches meet at Khartoum in Sudan.
Is Lake Victoria a rift valley lake?
No. Victoria lies in a shallow depression between the eastern and western arms of the East African Rift, formed by downwarping rather than faulting. That is why it is broad and shallow, unlike the deep, narrow rift lakes such as Tanganyika and Malawi.
Which is the largest man-made lake in Africa?
Lake Volta in Ghana, created by the Akosombo Dam in 1965. At roughly 8,500 sq km it has the largest surface area of any reservoir in the world, though Lake Kariba on the Zambezi holds more water by volume.
Why is Lake Chad shrinking?
Persistent Sahel drought since the late 1960s cut rainfall across its catchment, and heavy irrigation withdrawals from the Chari and Logone rivers reduced inflow further. Because the lake has no outlet and is only a few metres deep, it lost more than 90 percent of its 1960s area.
Which lake in Africa has the most fish species?
Lake Malawi, also called Lake Nyasa. It holds an estimated 700 to 1,000 species of cichlid fish, most of them found nowhere else, making it the most species-rich lake in the world.
