16 articles
Abaya (landform)
Lake Abaya (Abaya landform), also called Lake Margherita, is Ethiopia's largest Rift Valley lake (1,160 km2), a turbid, reddish-brown, quasi-endorheic freshwater lake draining into Lake Chamo via the Kulfo River.
African Great Lakes
The African Great Lakes are seven rift-valley lakes (Victoria, Tanganyika, Malawi, Turkana, Albert, Edward, Kivu) across ten countries, holding about a quarter of Earth's surface fresh water and famed for cichlid diversity and fisheries.
Albert
Albert: primarily Lake Albert (Mwitanzige, formerly Lake Mobutu Sese Seko), a transboundary rift lake shared by Uganda (54%) and DR Congo (46%), fed by the Semliki and Victoria Nile, draining as the Albert Nile; also a South Australian lake named in 1840.
Chew Bahir
Chew Bahir ('Salt Sea', Lake Stefanie) is a saline terminal playa lake in the southern Ethiopian Rift, about 70 by 30 km. It was a 2,000 km2 freshwater lake during the African Humid Period and holds a 620,000-year sediment core used to study human evolution.
Chott El Hodna
Chott El Hodna, a 1,150 km2 endorheic salt lake in central Algeria's Hodna basin, Ramsar site 1053 (362,000 ha, designated 2001), seasonal winter flooding, summer salt crust, salinity source for groundwater, rich waterbird and endemic flora.
Great Bitter Lake
Great Bitter Lake (al-Buḥayrah al-Murra al-Kubrā) is a 250 km² saltwater lake at the midpoint of Egypt's Suez Canal, formed from a dry salt flat when the canal opened in 1869, serving as the convoy crossing zone and formerly a salinity barrier to Red Sea species.
Lake Chad
Lake Chad is a shallow endorheic lake in the Sahel bordering Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger. Once about 22,000–25,000 km², it lost 90% of its area by the 1990s, then stabilized and recently refilled.
Lake Kivu
Lake Kivu, a deep meromictic rift lake on the Rwanda–DRC border at ~1,462 m elevation, holds ~60 billion m³ of dissolved methane and vast CO₂ in stratified deep waters, posing a limnic eruption hazard while fueling Rwandan methane-to-power plants KivuWatt (26 MW) and SPLK (56 MW).
Lake Malawi
Lake Malawi (Lake Nyasa) is Africa's third largest rift valley lake, 31,000 km² and over 700 m deep, famed for its endemic cichlid fishes and the Lake Malawi National Park World Heritage site.
Lake Tana
Lake Tana, also known as Tana hayk, is a large, shallow freshwater lake in the north-western Ethiopian Highlands and the main source of the Blue Nile River.
Lake Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika: large deep rift lake in East Africa (Burundi, DR Congo, Tanzania, Zambia), second deepest after Baikal, formed of alternating half-grabens; famed for endemic cichlids and warming-driven stratification.
Lake Turkana
Lake Turkana, formerly Lake Rudolf and called the Jade Sea for its green color, is the world's largest desert lake, stretching 249 kilometers across northern Kenya into Ethiopia.
Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake and Earth's second largest freshwater body, lies between Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania and feeds the White Nile. Key facts: 42 million dependents, Nalubaale Dam outflow control, Nile perch introduction, water hyacinth, eutrophication.
Mweru
Lake Mweru, a Zambia-DRC border lake in the Congo basin fed by the Luapula River; major inland fishery, endemic cichlid radiation, and the new Luapula River and Lake Mweru Authority. Distinct from Lake Mweru Wantipa.
Northern Eastern Rift
Northern Eastern Rift (FEOW ecoregion 528, Afrotropic): freshwater ecoregion of the northern Ethiopian Rift Valley's endorheic lakes (Zwai, Abijata, Langano, Shala, Awassa), crater lakes, and the Awash River terminating in Lake Abhe, spanning Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Somalia.
Tanganyika
Tanganyika names Lake Tanganyika, Africa's deepest and longest lake, shared by Zambia, Tanzania, Burundi, and the DRC; about 671 km long, 1,470 m deep, holding ~17% of the world's liquid freshwater, plus the Zambian Ramsar site of that name.