The Most Beautiful Lakes in Africa
7 places in 7 countries · updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful lakes in Africa are Lake Nakuru (Kenya), Lake Assal (Djibouti) and Lake Retba (Senegal). The list covers 7 lakes in 7 countries. Botswana has the most, with 1. Last updated 6 October 2026.
Many of Africa's most remarkable lakes owe their colours to chemistry. Along the East African Rift and the Afar Depression, volcanic rock and intense evaporation produce soda and salt lakes so alkaline or saline that only specialised algae and bacteria thrive in them, and those microbes in turn tint the water red, pink or white. In the north, the Sahara has left behind vast salt pans, the dry remains of lakes from wetter ages.
Lake Nakuru, a shallow soda lake in Kenya's Rift Valley, is famous for the flamingos that feed along its shores, and its park is also a sanctuary for rhinoceros. Lake Natron, in northern Tanzania, turns deep red from the microorganisms in its caustic water and is the main breeding ground of the lesser flamingo. Lake Retba in Senegal, separated from the Atlantic by a strip of dunes, takes on a pink hue from salt-loving algae, while salt collectors work its shallows.
The Afar region holds two of the strangest lakes on Earth. Lake Assal in Djibouti lies more than 150 metres below sea level, the lowest point in Africa, ringed by bright white salt. Lake Abbe is surrounded by limestone chimneys built by hot springs, some still venting steam. Chott el Djerid in Tunisia is a vast salt flat known for mirages, and the Makgadikgadi Pans in Botswana are among the largest salt flats in the world, remnants of an enormous ancient lake that fill with water and wildlife after the rains.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake Nakuru | Lake | Kenya | ✓ |
| 2 | Lake Assal | Lake | Djibouti | |
| 3 | Lake Retba | Quarry | Senegal | |
| 4 | Chott el Djerid | Salt flat | Tunisia | |
| 5 | Makgadikgadi Pans | Salt flat | Botswana | |
| 6 | Lake Natron | Lake | Tanzania | |
| 7 | Lake Abbe | Lake | Ethiopia |
01 Lake Nakuru
Kenya · 9.7 km from Nakuru0.367° S 36.083° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Nick115 from Pixabay That chemistry has changed, and it's worth knowing before setting expectations for a visit. Since around 2013, and especially from 2020 onward, Lake Nakuru's water level has risen dramatically — its surface area roughly doubled over a decade — diluting the alkaline water that the algae need to bloom. Less algae means less food, and in recent years the famous flocks have largely relocated to other Rift Valley soda lakes, particularly Lake Bogoria and Lake Natron across the border in Tanzania, leaving Nakuru with only a fraction of the flamingo numbers that made it famous.
Did you know? Scientists have estimated that Nakuru's flamingos once ate about 250,000 kg of algae per hectare of lake surface each year.
02 Lake Assal
Djibouti11.650° N 42.417° E
Mheidegger · CC BY 4.0 The lake is a product of the Afar Triangle, where the African and Arabian plates are pulling apart and the Great Rift Valley meets the sea. 4 and 1 million years old. Lake Assal has no river feeding it; instead, sea water from the Ghoubbet-el-Kharab, an inlet of the Gulf of Tadjoura some 10 km to the south-east, seeps through the fractured rock and rises in hot springs at a rate estimated at 5,000 to 8,000 litres per second. In this furnace, where summer temperatures reach around 52 °C, evaporation is relentless, and the water carries about ten times the salinity of the sea, making it one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world.
Did you know? The water holds about 35 percent salt on average, rising to around 40 percent at a depth of 20 metres, more than the Dead Sea.
03 Lake Retba
Charlie kirk is my idol
Senegal · 29.2 km from Dakar14.839° N 17.234° W
Issiaga0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The water's salinity — over 40% in places — rivals the Dead Sea, and it's buoyant enough that people float in it the same way. That same salinity supports a working industry: roughly 3,000 salt harvesters, coated in shea butter for hours of protection against the corrosive brine, wade or boat out to break up the crusted salt bed with long poles and haul it ashore by hand. Around 38,000 tonnes come out of the lake each year, historically used by Senegalese fishermen to preserve their catch and now sold on to Gambia, Guinea, Mali, and Benin as well.
Did you know? In 2021 the shore hosted a round of Extreme E, the off-road racing series for electric SUVs.
04 Chott el Djerid
Tunisia · 38 km from Tozeur33.700° N 8.433° E
Atef Ouni · CC BY-SA 4.0 What makes it extraordinary is colour and light. The crust is not simply white: depending on minerals, algae and water, patches turn pale green and purple, and after rare rain a thin film of water turns stretches of the plain into a mirror. The heat haze over the flats produces mirages — floating islands and false lakes — and fata morganas are a regular sight. At the edges salt is collected in crusted mounds.
Did you know? Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, backed the Saharan sea scheme, which planned a canal from the Gulf of Gabès but collapsed.
05 Makgadikgadi Pans
Botswana20.717° S 24.951° E
Image by serendypita from Pixabay The pans are the floor of a vanished sea. Lake Makgadikgadi once covered an area larger than Switzerland before it dried out tens of thousands of years ago, leaving Sua (Sowa) Pan, Ntwetwe Pan and the smaller Nxai Pan as its residue; the largest single pan is close to 5,000 square kilometres on its own, and Sua sits at about 890 metres, the lowest point of the basin. Look closely and the old lake is still legible: raised beaches, grassy islands and granite outcrops that were once headlands.
Did you know? Apart from a thin film of blue-green algae, the surface of the dry pans supports no plant life at all.
06 Lake Natron
Tanzania2.417° S 36.000° E
Christoph Strässler · CC BY-SA 2.0 The blood-red color is not pollution or dye; it's biology thriving in exactly the conditions that should kill it. Salt-loving cyanobacteria and other halophilic microorganisms multiply in the alkaline brine and produce red pigments as a byproduct of their own survival — the same basic principle behind Lake Hillier's pink, just a different organism dominating a different chemical extreme. As the water evaporates and salinity concentrates further, the red intensifies.
Did you know? The Engare Sero trackway is considered the largest collection of footprints of anatomically modern humans known in Africa.
07 Lake Abbe
Ethiopia11.167° N 41.783° E
Rolf Cosar · CC BY 3.0 The setting explains the strangeness. Lake Abbe sits at the Afar triple junction, the point where three pieces of the Earth's crust are slowly pulling away from one another. Hot geothermal fluid rising from below mixes with the lake water, and the carbonate it deposits has built the chimneys over time. The lake is also the end of a river: the Awash, which rises in the Ethiopian highlands, never reaches the sea but drains into a chain of six linked lakes, of which Abbe is the last. With no outlet, water leaves only by evaporation, so the lake is hypersaline, and its level swings sharply with small shifts in climate and with the water drawn from the Awash for irrigation upstream.
Did you know? The largest chimney, As Bahalto, stands about 60 metres high and measures around 90 metres across.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful lakes in Africa?
- On our list, Lake Nakuru (Kenya) ranks first, followed by Lake Assal (Djibouti) and Lake Retba (Senegal).
- Which country has the most lakes in Africa?
- In our collection, the most come from Botswana (1), Djibouti (1) and Ethiopia (1).
- Why is Lake Retba pink?
- The colour comes from the alga Dunaliella salina, which produces a red pigment to cope with the lake's high salt content. The tint is strongest when the sun is high and the water is still.
- Why do flamingos breed at Lake Natron?
- The lake's water is so caustic that few predators can reach the nests built on its salt islands. Its algae also provide abundant food, making it the most important breeding site of the lesser flamingo.
- What is the lowest point in Africa?
- Lake Assal in Djibouti, a salt lake in the Afar Depression, lies about 155 metres below sea level. It is the lowest point on the continent and one of the saltiest bodies of water on Earth.
- How many lakes are on this list in Africa?
- The list covers 7 lakes in 7 countries. Botswana has the most, with 1.