| Until recently, the native fish of Lake Victoria were
harvested by small-scale fishers and processed and traded by
women for local consumption. This kept the nutritional and
economic benefits in the lakeside communities. Today, the perch
are caught by large commercial operations for export market.
Local women a literally left with the scraps-which they must
purchase. Deprived of work and unable to afford this higher
priced (and less palatable) catch, local people face a serious
nutritional predicament. The perch take over has decimated the
primary economic and nutritional resource of 30 million people.
Many powerful people in the fishery business, for example, consider the Nile perch a saviour, not an ecological disaster, since the lake is producing record numbers of perch that are bringing in sorely needed export dollars. On the open lake, where local fishermen cannot pole their canoes, large boats are hauling out Nile perch by the uncounted and unregulated ton. The fish are then sold to dozens of processing plants built along the Kenyan and Ugandan shores by investors from Asia, Europe, and Australia. Within hours the thick white fillets have been cut from the fish, flash-frozen, boxed, and loaded on trucks headed for the port of Mombasa, Kenya, where they are shipped to the tables of Europe and the Middle East. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda control 6, 49, and 45 percent of the lake surface, respectively. The gross economic product of the lake catchment is in the order of US$3-4 billion annually, and supports an estimated population of 25 million people at incomes in the range of US$90-270 per capita p.a. The lake catchment thus provides for the livelihood of about one third of the combined populations of the three countries, and about the same proportion of the combined gross domestic product. With the exception of Kampala, the capital of Uganda, the lake catchment economy is principally an agricultural one, with a number of cash crops including exports of fish) and high level of subsistence fishing and agriculture. In Kenya and Uganda the areas of coffee and tea in the catchment are a significant part of those nations major agricultural exports. The quality of the physical environment is therefore a fundamental factor in maintaining and increasing the living standards of the growing population. Although it is not possible to estimate the global value of the lake in sustaining the regional economy, it can be seen that if deterioration of the lake resulted in a 5 percent reduction in productivity of the region, the consequent loss would be of the order of US$150 million annually. Conservation of Lake Victoria : Next Section |
Page Author: Dr Rick T Leah, Univ of L'pool - Contents last reviewed15/12/2005