Lake · Botswana
Lake Ngami
Lake Ngami is a lake in Botswana, north of the Kalahari Desert, about 930 metres above the sea. Its size changes a lot, because it only fills up with water in some seasons and years.
Picture credit: EinfachFrankfurt1955 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Lake Ngami?
Countries on its shores: Botswana.
Largest lake of: Botswana.
Middle of the lake: 20.48° S, 22.77° E
The story behind it
Lake Ngami gets its water from the Okavango Delta. A river called the Taughe carries water from the western side of the delta into the lake. How much arrives depends on the rain far away in Angola. In most years the lake covers up to about 50 km². After heavy rains in Angola, it grew to about 115 km² in 2009 and about 240 km² in 2011. Long ago it was much bigger. In 1849, David Livingstone and William Cotton Oswell were the first Europeans to see it, and Livingstone described a shimmering lake about 130 km long. Since 1890 the lake has shrunk a lot. Still, in wet years it is an important home for birds such as pelicans, flamingos, ibises and great egrets. A lake of liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan is named after Lake Ngami. When it is full, Lake Ngami is the largest lake in Botswana – not counting the huge Makgadikgadi salt pans, which are dry for most of the year.
Find it on the globe
Lake Ngami 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 Ngami?
That depends on the year: usually it covers up to about 50 km², but in 2011 it grew to about 240 km². Long ago it was much larger, with about 770 km².
Where does the water come from?
Are there bigger lakes in Botswana?
The Makgadikgadi Pans in Botswana cover a much bigger area, but they are a salt pan – a wide, flat plain of salt – and not a lake like Lake Ngami.
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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