Largest lakes & reservoirs in Kenya by water volume
The estimated volume of water that a lake contains is measured at the lake’s normal elevation. By this measure, the world’s largest freshwater lake is Siberia’s Lake Baikal.Water Volume can be measured in acre-feet, in cubic miles, or in cubic kilometers. One acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre (43,560 square feet) to a depth of one foot. One cubic mile equals 3,379,200 acre-feet. One cubic kilometer equals 810,713 acre-feet. 1 acre-foot is equal to 325,851 US gallons. Siberia’s Lake Baikal contains about 6,276,367,740,000,000 gallons of freshwater – nearly 1 million gallons for every living person on earth.
The other – and more widely used – measure of a lake’s size is the lake’s surface acreage. By that measure, the world’s largest freshwater lake is North America’s Lake Superior.
Note: In the United States, an acre foot is a unit of volume used to refer to large-scale bodies of water. It is defined by the volume of water needed to cover 1 acre of surface area to a depth of 1 foot.
You can find many of the the world’s largest lakes (by water volume) on LakeLubbers. Note: For some lakes, the water volume data is unknown or does not apply, so you may see fewer lakes than the total 8 articles we have published for Kenya lakes.
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Below are lakes within Kenya > Compared by water volume. This list does not represent all lakes in Kenya, only the 8 Kenya lake articles we have published on the LakeLubbers website.
Lake name  |
Water vol. in ac-ft |
Lake description |
|---|---|---|
| Lake Victoria, African Great Lakes (African Great Lakes, Central Uganda, Kagera Region, Tanzania, Kenya, Mara Region, Tanzania, Mwanza Region, Tanzania, Nyanza Region, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Western Region, Kenya) |
2,229,461,280 ac-ft | (Also known as Victoria Nyanza, Victoria Ukerewe, Victoria Nalubaale) Lake Victoria — also known as Victoria Nyanza, Ukerewe, and Nalubaale — rakes in the superlatives: it is the largest lake on the African continent b… |
| Lake Turkana, Kenya (Eastern Region, Kenya, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rift Valley Region, Kenya) |
165,061,206 ac-ft | (Also known as Lake Rudolf) Lake Turkana, located in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya and stretching into Northern Ethiopia, is said to be the world’s largest permanent desert lake… |
| Lake Natron (Arusha Region, Tanzania, Kenya, Rift Valley Region, Kenya, Tanzania) |
283,750 ac-ft | Lake Natron in northern Tanzania is a very special lake. Lying close to the Kenya border in the eastern branch of Africa’s Rift Valley, Lake Natron is… |
| Lake Nakuru (Kenya, Rift Valley Region, Kenya) |
75,396 ac-ft | Lake Nakuru is the most-visited lake in the country of Kenya. That might seem odd once people realize that this alkaline lake in Kenya’s East Rift Val… |