While most people can wager what the world’s longest river is, it’s likely that far fewer can name the world’s longest lake. Located in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, Lake Tanganyika stretches for more than 420 miles and divides four countries — Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Zambia. At 12,700 square miles in total size, Lake Tanganyika is Africa’s biggest freshwater reservoir and the second-largest in the world after Russia’s Lake Baikal. It is also one of the most biologically diverse lakes on the planet — upwards of 2,000 species call lake Tanganyika home, with over half of them endemic.
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