The Greater Lakes and the East African coastline as seen from space. The Indian Ocean can be seen to the right.

The Great Lakes of Africa are a series of lakes in and around the Great Rift Valley. They include Lake Victoria, the second largest fresh water lake in the world in terms of surface area, and Lake Tanganyika, the world's second largest in volume as well as the second deepest. The term Greater Lakes is also used, less commonly, for some of them. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... A world map showing the continent of Africa Africa is the worlds second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. ... For other uses, see Lake (disambiguation). ... Northern section of the Great Rift Valley. ... For other places with the same name, see Lake Victoria (disambiguation). ... For the village on the Isle of Wight, see Freshwater, Isle of Wight. ... Lake Tanganyika is a large lake in central Africa (3° 20 to 8° 48 South and from 29° 5 to 31° 15 East). ...

The term Great Lakes is in the African context a rather loose one. Unlike their North American counterparts, the three largest lakes have a host of nearby middle-sized and small lakes, though the small ones would be considered very substantial in many countries of the world. There is no accepted size criterion for Great Lake.

They are also divided between three different catchments (river basins), and a number have no exit. The following, in order of size from largest down, are included on most lists of the African Great Lakes: A catchment is any device or structure that captures water. ...

• Lake Victoria
• Lake Tanganyika
• Lake Nyasa
• Lake Turkana
• Lake Albert
• Lake Kivu

Some call only Lake Victoria, Lake Albert, and Lake Edward the Great Lakes, as they are the only three that empty into the White Nile. (Lake Kyoga is part of Great Lakes system, but is not itself considered a Great Lake, on size grounds. Lake Tanganyika and Lake Kivu both empty into the Congo River system, while Lake Malawi is drained by the Shire River into the Zambezi. Lake Turkana has no outlet. For other places with the same name, see Lake Victoria (disambiguation). ... Lake Tanganyika is a large lake in central Africa (3° 20 to 8° 48 South and from 29° 5 to 31° 15 East). ... A view of the lake from Likoma Island Lake Malawi, originally known as Lake Nyasa, Lake Nyassa and Lake Niassa after the Yao word for lake, is the most southerly lake in the Great African Rift Valley system. ... View over Lake Turkana Lake Turkana, formerly known as Lake Rudolf, is a lake in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya (although the far northern end of the lake crosses into Ethiopia), which covers a surface area of 6405 km² (2473 mi²), making it the worlds largest permanent desert... For other uses, see Lake Albert (disambiguation). ... Lake Kivu is one of the Great Lakes of Africa. ... Lake Edward can be seen on this map of Uganda Lake Edward is one of the Great Lakes of Africa. ... The White Nile is a river of Africa, one of the two main tributaries of the Nile, the other being the Blue Nile. ... Map showing the location of Lake Kyoga in Uganda. ... The Congo River (for a time known as Zaire River) is the largest river in Western Central Africa. ... The Shire is a river in Southern Africa. ... This article includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ...

Two other lakes close to Lake Tanganyika do not appear on the lists despite being larger than Edward and Kivu: Lake Rukwa and Lake Mweru. Lake Rukwa is a lake in southwestern Tanzania. ... Lake Mweru is a lake located on the border between Zambia and Democratic Republic of the Congo, about 150 km west of the southern end of Lake Tanganyika. ...

Because the term is a loose one, it is often preferable to use other categorizations such as African Rift Valley Lakes or East African Lakes.

T - Tanganyika
V - Victoria
A - Albert
E - Edward
K - Kivu
M - Malawi

Lake Tanganyika is a large lake in central Africa (3° 20 to 8° 48 South and from 29° 5 to 31° 15 East). ... For other places with the same name, see Lake Victoria (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Lake Albert (disambiguation). ... Lake Edward can be seen on this map of Uganda Lake Edward is one of the Great Lakes of Africa. ... Lake Kivu is one of the Great Lakes of Africa. ...

Great Lakes region

The term Great Lake region is likewise somewhat loose. It is used in a narrow sense for the area lying between northern Lake Tanganyika, western Lake Victoria, and lakes Kivu, Edward and Albert. This comprises Burundi, Rwanda, north-eastern DR Congo, Uganda and north-western Kenya and Tanzania. It is used in a wider sense to extend to all of Kenya and Tanzania, but not usually as far south as Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique nor as far north as Ethiopia, though these four countries border one of the Great Lakes. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, called Zaïre between 1971 and 1997, is a nation in central Africa. ...

An estimated 107 million people live in the Great Lakes region.^{[citation needed]}. The area described in the narrow sense above is one of the most densely populated areas of Africa. Because of past volcanic activity this area also contains some of Africa's best farmland. Its altitude gives it a sub-tropical climate despite being right on the equator, becoming temperate in the mountains. This makes tropical diseases of humans and livestock, such as trypanosomiasis, less prevalent, so that, for instance, cattle and other susceptible animals thrive. Subtropical (or semitropical) areas are those adjacent to the tropics, usually roughly defined as the ranges 23. ... World map showing the equator in red In tourist areas, the equator is often marked on the sides of roads The equator marked as it crosses Ilhéu das Rolas, in São Tomé and Príncipe. ... For the usage in virology, see temperate (virology). ... Sheep are commonly bred as livestock. ... Trypanosomiasis is the name of the diseases caused by parasitic protozoan trypanosomes of the genus trypanosoma in vertebrates. ... For general information about the genus, including other species of cattle, see Bos. ...

Because of the density of population and the agricultural surplus in the region the area became highly organized into a number of small states. The most powerful of these monarchies were Rwanda, Burundi, Buganda, and Bunyoro. Unusually for sub-Saharan Africa, the traditional borders were largely maintained by the colonial powers. The flag of Buganda Buganda is the kingdom of the 52 clans of the Baganda people, the largest of the traditional kingdoms in present-day Uganda. ... Bunyoro flag The current Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara and its districts Bunyoro is a region of Uganda, and from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century one of the most powerful kingdoms of East Africa. ...

Being the long sought after source of the Nile, the region had long been of interest to Europeans. The first Europeans to arrive in the region in any numbers were missionaries who had limited success in converting the locals, but did open the region to later colonization. The increased contact with the rest of the world led to a series of devastating epidemics affecting both humans and livestock. These decreased the region's population dramatically, by up to 60% in some areas. The region did not return to its precolonial population until the 1950s. For other uses, see Nile (disambiguation). ... A missionary is a propagator of religion, often an evangelist or other representative of a religious community who works among those outside of that community. ... In epidemiology, an epidemic (from [[Latin language] epi- upon + demos people) is a disease that appears as new cases in a given human population, during a given period, at a rate that substantially exceeds what is expected, based on recent experience (the number of new cases in the population during...

While seen as a region with great potential after independence, the region has in recent decades been marred by civil war and conflict, from which only Tanzania has largely escaped. The worst affected areas have been left in great poverty.

See also

• 2008 Rwanda earthquake
• 2005 Lake Tanganyika earthquake
• List of lakes
• List of world's largest lakes
• Rift Valley lakes

Location of earthquake Workers in Nairobi were quick to rush to safety when the quake hit. ... // This list of major or noteworthy lakes is sorted alphabetically by continent. ... Worlds largest lakes (over 1,700 sq. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

References

• Jean-Pierre Chrétien. The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History trans Scott Straus

Coordinates: 8°00′S, 35°00′E Animated map exhibiting the worlds oceanic waters. ... The term World Ocean refers to the interconnected system of the planet Earths marine waters. ... The Arctic Ocean, located in the southern hemisphere and mostly in the Antarctic south polar region, is the largest of the worlds five major landmassesic divisions and the deepest. ... The Atlantic Ocean, not including Arctic and Antarctic regions. ... Pacific redirects here. ... The Southern Ocean, also known as the Great Southern Ocean, the Antarctic Ocean and the South Polar Ocean, is the International Hydrographic Organizations oceanic division encircling Antarctica, comprising the southernmost waters of the World Ocean south of 60° S latitude. ... Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ...