Lake Victoria is one of the African Great Lakes. The lake was renamed Lake Victoria after Queen Victoria by the explorer John Hanning Speke. With a surface area of approximately 59,947 km2, Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake by area, the world's largest tropical lake, and the world's second largest fresh water lake by surface area after Lake Superior in North America. In terms of volume, Lake Victoria is the world's ninth largest continental lake, containing about 2,424 km3 of water.(Wikipedia)