Lake Victoria
| Lake Victoria | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Location | African Great Lakes |
| Coordinates | 1°S 33°E / 1°S 33°ECoordinates: 1°S 33°E / 1°S 33°E |
| Primary inflows | Kagera River |
| Primary outflows | White Nile (river, known as the "Victoria Nile" as it flows out of the lake) |
| Catchment area | 184,000 km2 (71,000 sq mi) 238,900 km2 (92,200 sq mi) basin |
| Basin countries |
Tanzania Uganda Kenya |
| Max. length | 337 km (209 mi) |
| Max. width | 250 km (160 mi) |
| Surface area | 68,800 km2 (26,600 sq mi) |
| Average depth | 40 m (130 ft) |
| Max. depth | 83 m (272 ft) |
| Water volume | 2,750 km3 (660 cu mi) |
| Shore length1 | 3,440 km (2,140 mi) |
| Surface elevation | 1,133 m (3,717 ft) |
| Islands | 84 (Ssese Islands, Uganda; Maboko Island, Kenya) |
| Settlements | |
| 1 Shore length is not a well-defined measure. | |
Lake Victoria (Nam Lolwe in Luo; Nalubaale in Luganda; Nyanza in Kinyarwanda and some Bantu languages) is one of the African Great Lakes. The lake was named after Queen Victoria by the explorer John Hanning Speke, the first Briton to document it. Speke accomplished this in 1858, while on an expedition with Richard Francis Burton to locate the source of the Nile River.
With a surface area of approximately 68,800 km2 (26,600 sq mi), Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake by area, the world's largest tropical lake, and the world's second largest fresh water lake by surface area, after Lake Superior in North America. In terms of volume, Lake Victoria is the world's ninth largest continental lake, containing about 2,750 cubic kilometres (2.23×109 acre·ft) of water.
Lake Victoria receives its water primarily from direct rainfall and thousands of small streams. The Kagera River is the largest river flowing into this lake, with its mouth on the lake's western shore. Lake Victoria is drained solely by the Nile River near Jinja, Uganda, on the lake's northern shore.
Lake Victoria occupies a shallow depression in Africa; it has a maximum depth of 84 m (276 ft) and an average depth of 40 m (130 ft). Its catchment area covers 184,000 km2 (71,000 sq mi). The lake has a shoreline of 7,142 km (4,438 mi) when digitized at the 1:25,000 level, with islands constituting 3.7 percent of this length, and is divided among three countries: Kenya (6 percent or 4,100 km2 or 1,600 sq mi), Uganda (45 percent or 31,000 km2 or 12,000 sq mi), and Tanzania (49 percent or 33,700 km2 or 13,000 sq mi).
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Wikipedia