Lake · Togo
Lake Togo
Lake Togo is a shallow lake on the coast of Togo in West Africa. Only a narrow strip of sand separates it from the Atlantic Ocean, and fishers push their long canoes across it with poles.
Picture credit: MaHeHoe (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Александра Пугачевская (Alexandra Pugachevsky) (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Joy.blessing08 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Lake Togo?
Countries on its shores: Togo.
Largest lake of: Togo.
Middle of the lake: 6.25° N, 1.42° E
The story behind it
Lake Togo is about 15 kilometres long and 6 kilometres wide. The Sio and Haho rivers flow into it, and it also gets water from the smaller Lake Vogan nearby. A sandbar about a kilometre wide keeps the lake apart from the sea. Only now and then, after floods, is a channel to the sea opened near the town of Aného, and the sand closes it again within a few weeks. Fishers glide over the shallow water in canoes called pirogues and catch tilapia, catfish, soles, carp and crabs. Terns and other water birds visit the lake, and people come here to swim, sail and water-ski. In 1884 the explorer Gustav Nachtigal signed a treaty in the village of Togoville on the shore, which put the region under German protection. Lake Togo is the bigger of the country's two main lakes.
Find it on the globe
Lake Togo 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 Togo?
Lake Togo covers about 64 km², but when the water is low it shrinks to about 46 km². It is about 15 km long and 6 km wide.
Is Lake Togo connected to the sea?
Usually not: a sandbar separates it from the Atlantic Ocean. Only after floods is a channel sometimes opened near Aného, and the sand closes it again within a few weeks.
What do the fishers catch in the lake?
They catch tilapia, catfish, soles, carp and crabs. They move across the shallow water in long canoes called pirogues, which they push along with poles.
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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