Lubovane Reservoir

Where is Lubovane Reservoir?

Countries on its shores: Eswatini.

Largest body of water of: Eswatini.

Middle of the lake: 26.74° S, 31.70° E

The story behind it

Eswatini has no natural lake of this size, so its largest lakes are reservoirs. The Lubovane Reservoir is the largest of them by area: it covers about 13.9 square kilometres, only a little more than the lake behind the Mnjoli Dam. The Maguga Dam lake is smaller, but it holds more water. Lubovane was finished in 2008. Three dams hold the water back, and together they can store about 155 million cubic metres. The reservoir lies in the basin of the Great Usuthu River. At the start of 2011, after heavy rains, the dam spilled over for the first time. One farmer said the reservoir looked like the ocean! A main canal carries the water from the dam to the fields. There, farmer companies grow sugar cane and bananas, and the project was planned to water about 11 500 hectares of land.

Find it on the globe

Lubovane Reservoir 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.