Reservoir
Kainji Lake
Natural Earth’s outline of Kainji Lake measures about 1,230 km² (476 mi²), the 81st largest of the 104 lakes on sizeversus, and 1.19× the size of São Tomé and Príncipe.
20 km
- Kainji Lake
- São Tomé and Príncipe
The numbers
- 1,230km²Area, measured476 mi² · Natural Earth outline
- 1,150km²Area, publishedWikidata · 7.2% below our measure, flagged
- 121mGreatest depthWikidata
- 150mAbove sea levelSurface, Wikidata
The area is measured from the outline drawn above, on the WGS84 ellipsoid; the published figure is shown beside it, and a water body is kept only if the two are within 10%. This one is between 5% and 10% apart, so it is flagged and no comparison is built for it automatically.
What the numbers say about Kainji Lake
- The Caspian Sea (called a sea or a lake, depending on the definition), the largest of the 104 lakes ranked on sizeversus, is 308× the size of Kainji Lake; Kainji Lake ranks 81st.
- Kainji Lake sits between Lake Champlain (1,250 km²) and Lesser Slave Lake (1,200 km²) in the ranking.
- It is a reservoir, made by a dam, and the 10th largest of the 14 reservoirs in this ranking.
- Counted as a country, Kainji Lake would be larger than 35 of the 212 countries listed on sizeversus and would rank 178th by area, between the Comoros (1,670 km²) and São Tomé and Príncipe (1,040 km²).
- It is larger than 1 of the 51 US states and districts (the biggest of them is Washington, D.C., 162 km²) and smaller than 50.
- It is smaller than every one of the 31 provinces and regions of China.
- The closest US state is Rhode Island (2,830 km²): Kainji Lake is 44% of the size of Rhode Island.
- Wikidata records a greatest depth of 121 m.
- Its surface lies about 150 m above sea level (Wikidata).
- Kainji Lake lies at 10°N, close to the equator, where a standard web map (Web Mercator) is nearly true to size: it inflates area by only about 1.0×.
- Laid out flat, Kainji Lake stretches about 92 km north to south and 40 km east to west.
- Our measured 1,230 km² is 7.2% above Wikidata’s published figure of 1,150 km². This difference is flagged for review: a lake’s outline may include islands or bays that the published figure leaves out, or the water level may differ. The outline is kept because it is within 10%, and this page is not matched automatically to any other.
About the same size as
Countries
US states
On the shore
Natural Earth’s outlines of Nigeria contain or lie within 4 km of the outline of Kainji Lake. That is what its geometry says, and it is not a statement about who owns the water or where any border runs in it.
Names
- Kainji Lakethe name in this page’s titlesource: Wikidata’s English label
- Kainjialso calledsource: Natural Earth
- Kainji Reservoiralso calledsource: Natural Earth
Where Kainji Lake ranks
Kainji Lake is the 81st largest of the 104 lakes on sizeversus, ranked by measured area.
Share this outline
Sources and method
- Outline
- Natural Earth, 1:10m Lakes + Reservoirs, public domain (Lakes + Reservoirs). Outlines of lakes are drawn at 1:10 million.
- Boundary
- A lake or a sea has no legal boundary of its own. The outline is a cartographic one, and the page says so by showing the measured area beside the published one.
- Area basis
- Measured outline: computed on the WGS84 ellipsoid from the full-detail outline and shown rounded. Published figure: Wikidata (CC0), fetched 2026-11-11. An outline is kept within 10% of the published figure and matched to other places automatically within 5%.
- Depth, volume, height
- As recorded in Wikidata; a volume that cannot be right for the area and depth is left out.
- Shore
- Countries whose Natural Earth outline contains or comes close to the water's outline; computed, not a statement of ownership.
- Drawing
- Each outline is projected with an equal-area projection centred on its own centroid, so areas stay true and two can be laid over each other.
- Data built
- 2026-11-11