Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria is the largest freshwater lake in Africa and second in the whole world after Lake Superior in North America categories among Africa’s great lakes. Lake Victoria was named after the royal Queen of England Queen Victoria at the time Explorer John Hannington Speke visited Africa and discovered Lake Victoria as the source of River Nile in 1958.
Lake Victoria covers an area of approximatey 68,000 square kilometres. The Lake was formed by down wapping processes and it’s believed to have a maximum depth of about 80 to 84 meters and an average length of 40 meters, it’s moderately shallow and level is evidently less in evaluation to any other great lakes in Africa. Its biggest occupation is divided in three countries mainly; Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, however the biggest part of the lake is found in Uganda.
Lake Victoria lies between the western Albertine Rift valley and the Eastern rift valley with closely to about 85 percent of the water inflow and only 15 percent of the water outflow due to evaporation and rainfall. In Uganda, The Lake reaches widely to over 4 districts inclusive Entebbe, Jinja, Kampala and Masaka with over 84 clusters of islands known as the Ssese Islands which are currently one of the tourist attractions in Uganda. The existence of the lake has strongly supported both Economic and tourism sectors of Uganda. Economic activities carried out on the Lake include fishing and the rest are tourism activities with Jinja district doing most of these tourist activities such as boat cruises and sports fishing. This lake falls under the many attractions in Uganda including Queen Elizabeth National Park, Kidepo Valley National Park, Kibale Forest National Park among others.
Source of the Nile
Lake Victoria is marked as the source of River Nile, with its source in Jinja district of Uganda. River Nile is the longest River in the world starting its journey from North eastern park of Africa flowing till Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
The River Nile is about 6,700km long flowing through 11 countries namely Uganda, Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, DR.Congo, Kenya, Eritrea, and finally Egypt. The River comprises of two major twigs namely the white and Blue Nile that connects in Khartoum forming the core Nile made up of Cataract Nile with Egyptian Nile.
The source of the Nile starts its journey from Uganda-Jinja flowing to the northern direction for about 500 km, passing through a narrow channel in Murchison falls national park called the great Murchison falls into Lake Albert onto Lake Albert Nile crossing to Sudan and finally pouring its waters in Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea. It also has small streams of River Kagera, River Katonga.
Just like Lake Victoria, River Nile has greatly contributed towards the social-economic development of Uganda and Egypt. River Nile has promoted tourism development activities in Uganda. First of all it’s the Nile that has supported hydro-power generation in Uganda that is Kira, Nalubaale dam, Bujagali dam and Karuma dams. Tourist activities supported by the River are mainly found in Jinja.
An excursion to Jinja will give you a full satisfaction of River Nile because most of, if not all tourist activities take place here. Some of the activities on the Nile include; white water rafting, kayaking, bungee jumping, Nile cruises to mention but a few. One most visited site is the source of River Nile, this is a point where Explore Speke declaimed and confirmed that end of Lake Victoria and the beginning of River Nile.
