Lake Victoria or Victoria Nyanza is one of the African Great Lakes. The lake was named after the United Kingdom's Queen Victoria, by John Hanning Speke, the first European to see the lake. At 68,800 square kilometres, Lake Victoria is Africa s largest lake, and the largest tropical lake in the world. As Lake Michigan-Huron is connected at the same elevation pool and is thus treated as one lake by hydrologists and geographers, Lake Victoria is the world s third-largest freshwater lake. In terms of volume, it is the world s seventh-largest freshwater lake, containing 2,750 cubic kilometres of water.