African Great Lakes
African Great Lakes region

The Great Lakes region (rarely: Greater Lakes region) consists of ten riparian countries: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The adjective interlacustrine ("between lakes") can refer to the region, or more specifically, the nations or area bounded by the lakes.

The Swahili language is the most commonly spoken language in the African Great Lakes region. It also serves as a national or official language of five nations in the region: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Because of its high population—estimated to be 107 million people —and the agricultural surplus in the region, the area became organized into a number of small states. The most powerful of these monarchies were Buganda, Bunyoro, Karagwe, Rwanda, and Burundi.

Being the long-sought source of the Nile and the watershed triple point between the rivers Nile, Congo and Zambezi, the region had long been of interest to Europeans. The first Europeans to arrive in the region in any numbers were Christian missionaries who had limited success in converting the locals, but did open the region to later colonization. Increased contact with the rest of the world led to a series of devastating epidemics affecting both humans and livestock.

While seen as a region with great potential after independence, the Great Lakes region has suffered from civil war and conflict in the four decades around the turn of the 21st century (c. 1980 –2020). In 2022 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees commended Tanzania for consistently welcoming and aiding refugees from other countries in the region.
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