Quote:1,000 People Live on a Rock Smaller Than a Football Field on a Giant Lake—But You'll Never Guess Why


Migingo Island is one of the most populated islands on Earth. (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images)

By Michael Wing
6/17/2024
Updated:
6/17/2024
On a tiny island on the world’s second-largest freshwater lake two nations wage Africa’s “smallest war.”
An iron-clad tortoise of rock and sheet metal juts from Lake Victoria, christened after Britain’s late queen, surrounded by over 23,000 square miles of water. Here a thronging mix of nationalities mingles—despite territorial disputes, competition over fishing, and myriad viewpoints—all in relative harmony on an island less than half the size of a football field.
All this began over three decades ago, with reports of fishermen earning three to four times in a day what shore-based cohorts earned in a month, driving anglers to seek their fortunes on Migingo Island, the outcrop in question, at the very source of the Nile River.