1. Fishery Organisation in East Africa

Attempts at fisheries collaboration among Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are among the oldest on the continent. As early as 1928, it was recommended that a unified lake-wide authority for regulation and for the collection of fisheries statistics be set up. Establishment of the East African Freshwater Fisheries Research Organization (EAFFRO) in 1947 solidified collaboration, and it was boosted further with formation of the East African Community in 1967. In the early 1970s, all three countries became members of the FAO Committee for Inland Fisheries of Africa (CIFA). After the disappearance of this co-ordinating mechanism with the end of the East African Community in 1977, the need for collaboration was felt so strongly that special CIFA Sub-Committee for Lake Victoria was set up in 1980. Although this was a useful forum for the three countries, the difficulty of implementing management measures on a lake-wide basis due to the design of proposal for the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO).

The Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO) is a Tripartite Agreement of 1994 that involves Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. In addition, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) is developing a project that, for the first time, ensure that regional fisheries management would operate within a regional framework for environmental action, rather than having only a commercial orientation. LVFO would support the GEF project.

Each of the three riparian Governments has prepared a National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP). All three NEAPS acknowledge that Lake Victoria demands urgent attention through regional cooperation. The NEAPs focus on problems such as water pollution, biodiversity loss, land degradation, and damage to wetlands, all central concerns for the lake and its catchments. Discussion to broaden regional environmental cooperation covering the Lake Victoria Basin started in late 1992. In May 1994 the three Governments decided to enter into agreement jointly to prepare and implement a Lake Victoria Environmental Management Program. A tripartite agreement to this effect was signed August 5, 1994. The essential soundness of this agreement has been proven during project preparation, and its main institutional arrangement have been proven during project preparation, and its main institutional arrangements, which have worked well, will continue into project implementation.

In 1988, the World Conservation Union Red Book of Endangered Species listed the hundreds of endemic fishes of Lake Victoria under a single heading: "Endangered." The most exuberant expression of vertebrate adaptive radiation in the world, the haplochromine species, is now in the midst of the first mass extinction of vertebrates that scientists have ever had the opportunity to observe, an event as exciting as it is depressing.

2. The Fishing Industry on Lake Victoria

The changing circumstances are taking a toll on humans as well as fish. Traditional ways of life along the shore are disappearing. As Ochumba drives from Kusa Bay back to Kisumu, he stops on Kisumu's outskirts to talk with women frying perch scraps over charcoal fires. These women from nearby fishing communities once bought native tilapia, labeo, and haplochromines to dry in the sun and sell. As these species dwindled, the women migrated to squatter camps near the perch-processing plants, where they buy the carcasses after filleting. The fleshy heads and tails are fried and sold from roadside pole stands; they are the only fish most local people can afford. In fact, if the lake continues to deteriorate and the over-fished perch population crashes, it's not clear what anyone who depends on Victoria will eat.

At first, official concern focused on problems the perch created on shore. Fishermen needed bigger gear to deal with a fish that could grow to a hefty six feet. Villagers didn't know how to fillet or cook the big oily thing and couldn't dry it in the sun. There were no markets for the monster, prices were low, and most perch were left on the beach to rot. With UN funds, a Kenya Marine Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) team toured lakeside villages and Nairobi hotels, demonstrating how to fillet, freeze, smoke, and cook the fish. Foreign-aid groups and investors moved in with processing plants and refrigerated trucks. With the benefit of hindsight, it's tempting to say the effort was too successful. Today few people who live by the lake can match the price hotels and foreign customers are willing to pay for perch, so much so that the spectre of protein malnutrition is being raised in a region exporting 200,000 tons of fish a year. No part of the perch goes to waste. A poster at KMFRI offices shows shoes, belts, and purses made by a Mombasa company from tanned perch hide. In Nairobi's newspapers front-page ads offer up to six dollars a pound for dried perch swim bladders, which are sent to England for filtering beer and wine and to the Orient for making soup stock.

The revenues generated by the Nile perch fishery are much greater than those ever realized from the lake's native species, but the relationship between changes in the lake's fauna and changes in revenues generated by the fishery is not a simple one. Data for fishery landings, suggest that the usable productivity of the lake increased by at least half an order of magnitude over 15 years.

The distribution of wealth resulting from the Nile perch fishery is also different from that of the original, artisanal fishery. Some local fisherman may actually be worse off despite the apparent plenty. Large-scale operations that exploit the introduced species for foreign currency are doing well. The small- scale fisherman and fishmongers, who never went hungry and who relied for their livelihoods on the traditional tastes and interesting diversity of the native species, are a vanishing breed. The spectre of protein malnutrition in the lake basin has been raised by socio-economists, an incredible irony in an area exporting nearly 200,000 tons of fish protein annually.

In Uganda, for instance, the fishing industry employs 25,000 people and fish accounts for around 60 per cent of animal protein consumption. On the other hand, both illegal fishing and the invasion of Uganda's lakes by water hyacinth are threatening fish stocks in Uganda's lakes, and especially in Lake Victoria. Fishermen are using nets which trap mature as well as young fish in large areas of Lake Victoria. Water hyacinth is affecting oxygen concentration in the breeding areas, leading to premature deaths. New fish processing plants are opening on Lake Victoria and more are licensed but not yet under construction, putting further pressure on fish stocks in the lake.

Economics of the Lake Victoria Fishery: Next Section