Lake Bosumtwi
Sign in to saveAlso known as Lake Bosumtwe, Lake Bosomtwe, Bosomtwe Lake
crater lake in Ghana
Key facts
- Location
- Ashanti
- Type
- Ancient lake , Impact crater lake, 1.07 million years old
- Primary inflows
- rainfall
- Primary outflows
- none
- Catchment area
- 400 km (150 sq mi)
- Basin countries
- Ghana
- Max length
- 8.6 km (5.3 mi)
- Max width
- 8.1 km (5.0 mi)
- Surface area
- 49 km (19 sq mi)
- Average depth
- 45 m (148 ft)
- Max depth
- 81 m (266 ft)
- Surface elevation
- 150 m (490 ft)
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- impact crater lake
- Country
- Ghana
- Continent
- Africa
- Elevation
- 107
- Image
- Bosumtwi Worldwind SW.jpg
- Length
- 8.5
Show 3 more facts
- Commons category
- Lake Bosumtwi
- native label
- Bosumtwi
- Ghana Place Names URL
- sites.google.com/site/ghanaplacenames/places-in-perspective/lake-bosomtwe
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~4 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Lake Bosomtwe, also spelled Bosumtwi, is the only man made lake in Ghana. It is situated within an ancient impact crater that is about 10.5 kilometres (6.5 mi) in diameter. It is about 30 km (19 mi) south-east of Kumasi, the capital of Ashanti, and is a popular recreational area. There are about 30 villages near the crater lake of Lake Bosomtwe, with a combined population of about 70,000. The most popular amongst the villages where tourists usually settle is Abono.
The Ashanti consider Bosomtwe a sacred lake. According to traditional belief, the souls of the dead come here to bid farewell to the goddess Asase Ya. Because of this, it is considered permissible to fish in the lake only from wooden planks. Among the fish species in the lake is the endemic cichlid Hemichromis frempongi, and the near-endemic cichlids Tilapia busumana and T. discolor.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Lake Bosumtwi” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.