Talk:Lake Victoria

Useful picture

Lake Victoria on a NASA MODIS satellite picture. Borders between Uganda (North-west), Kenya (North-east) and Tanzania (South) are marked by grey dotted lines.

I uploaded a cropped NASA satellite picture of Lake Victoria; it may be useful despite the few clouds hanging over it. I don't have enough time to find a nice place for it in the article so I'm parking it here. — mark ✎ 14:01, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hydroelectricity, water level falling

The reason, says the report, is to maintain sufficient flows of water over the dam's turbines and keep the lights on in Uganda.

"The resultant over-release of water... is contributing to the severe drop in water level in Lake Victoria," says the report, written by Daniel Kull, a hydrological engineer based in Nairobi, for International Rivers Network, a US green group.

The Owens Fall hydroelectric project dates back to 1954.

Until then, the lake spilled out over a natural rock weir, to form the Victoria Nile, which eventually becomes the White Nile.

Britain, Uganda's colonial power, blasted out the weir and replaced it with the first dam, now called the Nalubaale dam, thus effectively transforming Lake Victoria into a vast hydroelectric reservoir.

Maybe someone can build on this? Ksenon 19:20, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Size?

I read in World book it is 26,828 sq miles. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.206.165.12 (talk) 03:27, 3 February 2007 (UTC). Does their really need to be a citation to show it's the largest lake in the tropics? It's undisputably one of the three biggest lakes in the world, after the Caspian Sea and Lake Superior, and clearly the only one in the tropics.

Old name of Lake Victoria

I wonder if anybody has any information or citations regarding the past names of Lake Victoria. I am reading some journal extracts of Dr Johann Ludwig Krapf in Kenya Mountain, E.A.T. Dutton, 1929 and came across a discrepency. The locals keep giving Dr Krapf descriptions of where they believe Mount Kenya's rivers flow. The lake that is repeatedly described seems to match the description of Lake Victoria. The locals always refer to it as Lake Baringo. But the description definitely doesn't fit. Some entries are years apart and the people he interviews different, so it is unlikely to simply be a mistake during the interview. I am wondering if Lake Vicotria might have been called Lake Baringo originally and then in the confusion of Europeans naming things, the label Lake Baringo got applied to the wrong lake?

Here is an entry from 1st October 1851. It is from pg 77 of his diary. It was published in Church Missionary Intelligencer vol. iii, 1852 which is where Kenya Mountain copies it from.

The last mentioned river goes north-east into a much larger lake, called Baringo. This lake, according to my informer, has no end, although one should travel for a hundred days to see the end; nor can the opposite shore be seen.

Another entry from the same Church Missionary Intelligencer but from Krapf's journal entry of 5th August 1852 states:

When Rumu mentioned the great extent of the lake Baringo, it occurred to my mind whether this great inland sea was not identical with the large sea of Uniamesi, of which the natives know neither the end nor its commencement.

The current Lake Baringo is fairly small and can be walked around in a few days at most. The opposite shore can (almost?) always be seen. I can't imagine how it would be described as a never ending lake.

Does anybody have any knowledge about this discrepancy? If anyone has any sources then it would make an interesting addition to the article.

Mehmet Karatay 23:05, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I found a reference showing that Lake Victoria was indeed known as Baringo before Europeans renamed it. Here is an extract from page xlviii of the introduction of Travels and Missionary Labours in East Africa written by Ludwig Krapf in 1860:

It is very remarkable that Captain Speke should have seen the great lake which Rumu wa Kikandi, a native of Uemba, near the snowcapped mountain Kegnia, mentioned to me under the name "Baringu," the end of which cannot be found, "even if you travel a hundred days' distance along its shores," as my informant expressed himself. It is further remarkable that Captain Speke very properly named it Victoria Nyanza, in honour of Her Majesty...

I think this is a very interesting and important fact that should be worked into the article. Any suggestions where it should go? Mehmet Karatay 21:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The old name was Victoria Nyanza, as indicated on the old map. And on the Speke Monument from 1866. Nyanza being the local word for lake. So Victoria Nyanza should be at least indicated in the text as an alternative name.

Speke / Victoria Nyanza

So the words "It has since been recognized that the native guides used the name Lake Nyanza to describe it to him." are strange. As since when? It was recognised ages ago! 194.207.86.26 (talk) 10:10, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Egypt

Any mention of the problems with Egypt! Not too familiar with them myself but its something to the effect that they actually own the lake and East African countries need permission to use the lakes recourses because of The Nile Treaty of 1929 between Egypt and Great Britain, which was signed on behalf of its East African colonies, giving full control of the river and its resources to Egypt, or does that only affect the river Nile I wonder if any scientist have thought tnat Lake Victoria was a giant impact crater ? Looks like one to me. <gallery> impact crater around lake victoria.jpg

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Fish-for-Guns trade

See documentary Darwin's Nightmare. Everything's not hunky-dory in the Lake Victoria area. Particularly ignored in this article is the fish-for-guns trade (which is so absurd that no one believes me when I tell them about it).

Yes! i do. And you could add it to the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.150.86.152 (talk) 01:48, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Regions and provinces bordering Lake Victoria

Propose adding small list to first section: subdivisions bordering the lake: Tanzania: Kagera Region, Mwanza Region, Mara Region. Uganda: Central Region, Eastern Region. Kenya: Nyanza Province and Western Province (Kenya). Mr Accountable (talk) 19:33, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence that the original lake had dried up

It is mentioned that the original spot where the lake existed would have certain characteristics; one of them being high salinity. Why would this be?--Longinus876 (talk) 16:25, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

66.91.254.150 (talk) 22:50, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

While reading about Lake Victoria, I noted several errors in the paragraph that preceeds the "Geology" heading.

In the paragraph, the values for maximum depth, average depth, and length of shoreline differ from the values contained in the table of statistics that is captioned Lake Victoria.

Contradiction re: outflowing rivers

This article states in one place that the Katonga River and the White Nile flow out of Lake Victoria and in two places the same article states that the While Nile is the only river that flows out of Lake Victoria. The Kotanga River article also states that it flows out of Lake Victoria. Which is correct? Holy (talk) 20:16, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

The incorrect claim that the Katonga River flows out of Lake Victoria has been removed and the original text of that paragraph reworded. After a careful review, no verification for the claim could be found in the reference source cited. However, the same reference source does correctly state elsewhere that the (Victoria) Nile is the only outflow from Lake Victoria, so I have reused the source (expanding the reference details to ensure the cited source is more complete and verifiable). There is a similar problem with the entry for the article page on the Katonga River which I will attend to soon, provided nobody else does so first. In addition, the White Nile does not technically begin until the Nile reaches South Sudan. In view of this, I have provided only a very brief explanation, as this information is better dealt with in the relevant articles about the Nile River. Peter B. (talk) 14:19, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

problems on captions on Image-Languages-Lakevictoria-fr.svg

Problems on captions on ...

Local languages around lake Victoria

99.35.13.28 (talk) 06:29, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

The People

The Victoria Nyanza: the land, the races and their customs, with specimens of some of the dialects By Paul Kollmann

http://books.google.com/books?id=sLQhAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Rajmaan (talk) 22:58, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Identity of namer

The head of the article states that; "The lake was named after Queen Victoria, by David Livingstone, an officer in the British Indian Army." However the article itself states "[John Hanning] Speke named the lake after Queen Victoria." Livingstone's article says that he names Victoria Falls, so I suspect that there might have been a mixup, but I have no independent sources for that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Siind (talk • contribs) 22:25, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

You are correct. This error has been rectified and supplied with reference sources. Peter B. (talk) 14:22, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Invasive Species section cleanup

Almost all of the entire invasive species section reads as if it were written by a 10th grader. As well, there are zero citations in the whole section.Pdmckinley (talk) 16:42, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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External links modified

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Separate etymology to section

Etymology needs a separate section, as is the normal form. -Inowen (talk) 07:55, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Accomplished

"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."

How is naming a lake an "accomplishment?" -Inowen (nlfte) 23:16, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Name

Lake Victoria is the name given by the colonial power. It is an insult! I suggest changing the name of the article to an African name.--Sigmundg (talk) 11:29, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

If you do a quick research consulting the title of the wikipedia pages in africans languages you can see that the majority of them call the lake with the same (translated) name. 93.45.87.207 (talk) 11:41, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

That does not change the criticism 66.44.30.95 (talk) 13:06, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Our naming policy says, Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject. The article does include (in the 3rd paragraph) the name of the lake in four different local languages (and there are other languages, presumably with fewer speakers, that have not been included), but an article can have only one name, and, per policy, that name is the one that will be most familiar to English speakers world-wide. Donald Albury 16:20, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Formation

How did the downwarpinp occur 41.210.147.30 (talk) 09:46, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I've just added a bit the Geology section that covers that. - Donald Albury 16:57, 16 April 2022 (UTC)