Understanding the Great Lakes of East Africa and why they command 25 percent of the global water volume
Most of East Africa's great lakes, including Tanganyika, Malawi, Turkana, Albert, Edward, and Kivu, are Rift Valley lakes, with the exception of Victoria
Black News 
Most of East Africa’s great lakes, including Tanganyika, Malawi, Turkana, Albert, Edward, and Kivu, are Rift Valley lakes.
These lakes were formed as the Nubian and Somali plates slowly pulled apart, stretching and fracturing the Earth’s crust.
As a result, huge blocks of land sank between parallel faults, creating long, deep basins that gradually filled with water from rainfall and rivers.
This process therefore produced some of the world’s oldest and deepest freshwater lakes.
The East African Rift System has two main branches: the Gregory Rift (Eastern Rift) and the Albertine Rift (Western Rift).
However, Lake Victoria, the large water body which is shared between Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, seems to be the exception.
Although it lies between the two rift branches, Victoria is not a Rift Valley lake.
Instead of forming in a deep fault-bounded basin, Lake Victoria occupies a broad, shallow depression on the plateau between the Gregory and Albertine rifts.
As rifting slowly uplifted and reshaped the surrounding landscape over millions of years, ancient river systems were blocked while others were redirected into this basin.
Rainfall and rivers gradually filled the depression, creating Africa’s largest lake by surface area and the world’s largest tropical lake.
But Lake Victoria is essentially much shallower than its dramatic Rift Valley neighbors.
Today, the Kagera River provides most of its inflow, while the Victoria Nile carries its waters north on their long journey to the Nile.
So, the African Great Lakes, known in Kiswahili as Maziwa Makuu and in Kinyarwanda as Ibiyaga bigari, can be described as the series of lakes constituting the part of the Rift Valley lakes in and around the East African Rift.
And the lakes include Victoria, the second-largest freshwater body in the world by area and Tanganyika, the world’s second-largest freshwater lake by volume and depth.
There is also Lake Malawi, also known as Lake Nyasa, located in Southern Tanzania and North-West Malawi, which is the world’s fourth-largest freshwater lake by volume.
Then comes Lake Turkana, found in Northern Kenya and the world’s largest permanent desert lake and the world’s largest alkaline lake.
Collectively, the great lakes of Africa contain 31,000 cubic kilometers of water, which is more than either Lake Baikal or the Great Lakes of North America.
Their combined total volume constitutes about 25 percent of the planet’s unfrozen surface fresh water.
But funny thing, most of the countries within the Great Lakes Region of Africa continue to suffer water shortages.
