The African Great Lakes. Image: Wikipedia
Ever Google “Great Lakes”?
As part of my job as links hunter for Great Lakes Echo, I will run searches for Great Lakes stories through Google News to catch some of the more obscure publications that I don’t normally check.
Google has been great about sending me some interesting reads. But occasionally it also sends me half way around the world.
The Great Lakes of Africa are a system of seven lakes spread through three river basins. It is dominated by Lake Victoria, which is the continent’s largest lake and the third largest freshwater lake in the world (following lakes Michigan and Huron, which actually constitute one water system but two lakes).
The African Great Lakes also include — from second largest to smallest – lakes Tanganyika, Malawi, Turkana, Albert, Kivu and Edward. (Hey, I wonder if they have phonetic clues to remember the names like HOMES? What could you make from VTMTAKE? MATTEVK? EMATTVK? Maybe something in Swahili.)
But while our Great Lakes encompass two countries, the Great Lakes of Africa (also called the African Great Rift Valley Lakes) are divided between 10 countries. Several of the lakes also join to become the source of the great Nile River.
But despite the widespread political battles and decades of civil war, the Great Lakes region creates much the same headlines that the western lakes see today.
For instance, a search this weekend pulled up an article from South Africa’s Engineering News magazine on efforts to use the lakes for clean energy projects.
Editorials expound the need to protect the wetlands and forests around the Great Lakes, “a key component for nature and wildlife-based tourism,” according to Global Travel Industry News.
And the Kenyan newspaper The Daily Nation reports that illegal nets are to blame for low fish counts in the lake.
But perhaps the most fun find for me — an African environmental NGO called EcoNews Africa. Get it? Great Lakes Echo — EcoNews? Pretty close, huh?