Lake · Zambia
Lake Bangweulu
Lake Bangweulu is a wide, shallow lake in northern Zambia, surrounded by huge swamps. With every rainy season the water spreads far out over the flat land.
Picture credit: Baba's Door (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Mehmet Karatay (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Lake Bangweulu?
Countries on its shores: Zambia.
Largest lake of: Zambia.
Middle of the lake: 11.08° S, 29.75° E
The story behind it
Lake Bangweulu lies at about 1 140 metres above sea level, and it is very shallow: on average only 4 metres deep. About seventeen rivers feed it; the biggest is the Chambeshi. The Luapula River carries the water away to Lake Mweru. The land around is so flat that after the rains the edge of the flood can move up to 45 km. Then the open lake and the swamps together cover about 15 000 km². The swamps are home to hippos, elephants, around 400 kinds of birds and large herds of black lechwe, a kind of antelope. In 1989 more than 10 000 fishers worked on the lake with dugout canoes, and dried fish is sold to the mining towns farther west. The explorer David Livingstone reached the lake in 1868. Of all the natural lakes that lie completely inside Zambia, Bangweulu is the biggest.
Find it on the globe
Lake Bangweulu is there as a small blue dot with its name, right on the water. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How big is Lake Bangweulu?
The open water covers about 3 000 km², but the size changes with the seasons. Together with the swamps around it, the area is about 15 000 km².
Is Lake Bangweulu the largest lake in Zambia?
It is the largest natural lake that lies entirely in Zambia. Lake Kariba is a reservoir behind a dam, and Zambia shares Lake Mweru and Lake Tanganyika with its neighbours.
Who was David Livingstone?
He was a famous explorer and the first European to visit Lake Bangweulu, in 1868. He died in 1873 in a village at the southern edge of the flood plains.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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