Between Rwanda and the DRC lies a strange lake with the capacity to explode: Lake Kivu. It is one of only a handful of lakes in the world like this: they build up volcanic gas in their bottom waters until they sit like a bottle of champagne with a cork on top. Pop the cork and the gas can be explosively released. I had the honour of visiting one of the other such lakes, Lake Nyos, back in 2001 (more about that below); it had blown up in 1986, tragically killing more than 17000 people. Lake Kivu is much, much bigger, with many, many more people living on its shores. Commercial efforts are currently underway to extract some of its gas (both to lower the explosive risk, and to burn the extracted methane as fuel for electricity). But experts can't agree whether the lake is getting safer or not. https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-021-02523-5/index.html This was a hard feature to report. The people involved care deeply about Rwanda and its people; many have strong views about the la...
