Flag of Burkina Faso of black, white, and red. These colours represented the three major tributaries of the Volta River, which flows south through the country: the Black Volta, the White Volta and the Red Volta. It is similar to the tricolor flag used by the German Empire from 1871 to 1918. The flag was changed when Upper Volta became Burkina Faso on 4 August 1984. From 1984 until 1997, the official Burkina Faso coat of arms used a revolutionary central crest featuring a mattock crossed with a Soviet AK-47 assault rifle, along with an open book symbolising the importance of education and the
Lake Volta Dam holds back both the White Volta River and the Black Volta River, which formerly converged where the middle of the reservoir now lies, to form the single Volta River. The present Volta River flows from the outlets of the dam's powerhouse and spillways to the Atlantic Ocean in southern Ghana. The main islands within the lake are Dodi, Dwarf, and Kporve. Digya National Park lies on part of the lake's western shore. The lake is formed by the Akosombo Dam, which was originally conceived by the geologist Albert Ernest Kitson in 1915, but whose construction only began in 1961