Lake Tanganyika
Tanganyika is the world’s longest lake (about 660 km), the deepest lake in Africa (more than 1436 m), the second-deepest lake in the world, and the second-largest by volume of freshwater. At approximately 9-13 million years old, it’s also among the oldest.
Thanks to its age and ecological isolation, it’s home to an exceptional number of endemic fish, including 98% of the 250-plus species of cichlids.
Cichlids are popular aquarium fish due to their bright colors, and they make Tanganyika an outstanding snorkeling and diving destination.
Compared with its width, which ranges from 10 to 45 miles (16 to 72 km), it covers about 12,700 square miles (32,900 square km) and forms the boundary between Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa).
It occupies the southern end of the Western Rift Valley, and for most of its length, the land rises steeply from its shores. Its waters tend to be brackish.
Though fed by several rivers, the lake is not the center of an extensive drainage area. The largest rivers discharging into the lake are the Malagarasi, the Ruzizi, and the Kalambo, which has one of the highest waterfalls in the world (704 feet [215 meters]). Its outlet is the Lukuga River, which flows into the Lualaba River.
Lake Tanganyika is situated on the line dividing the floral regions of eastern and western Africa, and oil palms, which are characteristic of the flora of west Africa, grow along the lake’s shores.
Rice and subsistence crops are grown along the shores, and fishing is of some significance. Hippopotamuses and crocodiles are abundant, and the avifauna is diverse.
Many of the people living along the lake’s eastern borders (predominantly Bantu-speaking) trace their origins to areas of the Congo River basin.
The lake was first visited by Europeans in 1858, when the British explorers Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke reached Ujiji, on the lake’s eastern shore, in their quest for the source of the Nile River.
In 1871, Henry (later Sir Henry) Morton Stanley “found” David Livingstone at Ujiji. Important ports situated along Lake Tanganyika are Bujumbura (Burundi), Kalemi (Congo), and Ujiji and Kigoma (Tanzania).
The History of Lake Tanganyika
This vast inland sea was first made known to the European world in the mid-1800s by the English explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke.
They pursued it as the source of the Nile, arriving at its shores in February of 1858, only to discover that the Ruzizi River in the north, which they thought to be the Nile, flowed into and not out of the lake.
A decade later, Dr. David Livingstone disappeared in central Africa. Leading an expedition of approximately 200 men, Henry Morton Stanley headed into the interior from the eastern shore of Africa on March 21, 1871.
After nearly eight months, he found Livingstone in Ujiji, a small village on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, on November 10, 1871.
