Uganda is a country endowed with plenty of water, nearly one-fifth of the countrys total area, or 44,000 square kilometers, is open water or swampland and four of East Africa's Great Lakes such as Lake Victoria, Lake Kyoga, Lake Albert, and Lake Edward lie within Uganda or on its borders. Lake Victoria the greatest is found on the southeastern corner of the nation, with almost one-half of its 10,200-square-kilometer area lying within the Ugandan territory. It is the second largest inland freshwater lake in the world (after Lake Superior in America), and it feeds the upper waters of the Nile River, which is known as the Victoria Nile in this region.
Lake Kyoga and the surrounding basin make up most of central Uganda. Extensions of Lake Kyoga include Lake Kwania, Lake Bugondo, and Lake Opeta. The fingers like lakes are enclosed by marshland on rainy seasons. The lakes of the Lake Kyoga Basin are shallow, with a depth at times of only eight or nine meters. Lake Opeta forms a separate lake during dry seasons. Along the Zaire border are found Lake Albert, Lake Edward, and Lake George occupies the western troughs in the Rift Valley.
The Victoria Nile leaves Lake Victoria at the Owen Falls and descends on its way toward the northwest part of the country. The Nile widening as it receives the Kafu River from the west to form Lake Kyoga before flowing north to Lake Albert. Leaving Lake Albert, the Nile is now as known as the Albert Nile and travels roughly 200 kilometers to the Sudan border. Geological activity in southern and western Uganda over several centuries has shifted the drainage patterns of the river. The hinterland west of Lake Victoria is traversed by valleys that were once rivers that carried the waters of Lake Victoria into the Congo River system. The Katonga River flows westward from Lake Victoria to Lake George. Lake George and Lake Edward are connected by the Kizinga Channel. The Semliki River flows into Lake Edward from the north, where it drains parts of Zaire and forms a portion of the Uganda-Zaire border.
The Stunning Murchison locally known as the Kabalega waterfalls on the Victoria Nile River are east of Lake Albert. At the narrowest point on the falls, the waters of the Nile pass through an opening barely seven meters wide. One of the tributaries of the Albert Nile, the Zoka River, drains the northwestern corner of Uganda, a region still popularly known as the West Nile, other major rivers include the Achwa River known as the Aswa in Sudan on the north, the Pager River and the Dopeth-Okok River in the northeast, and the Mpologoma River, that drains into Lake Kyoga from the southeast.
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