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Lake Victoria fishing industry declines, spurring Gulf migration

Environmental and economic pressures push people in Kenya’s fishing communities to seek jobs in energy-rich Gulf states.

Kenyan fisherman Enos Awele Ajuoga takes his nets out of Lake Victoria’s water every morning. “Most youth, even those unemployed, are not interested in working in the fishing industry, socially it is not looked high at. A graduate working on the lake is perceived as a nobody.” said Ali Juma, a secretary at KENAFA. [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
By Sebastian Castelier and Quentin Muller
Published On 8 Nov 2021

“I am the major bread-earner for the family, but my income is not enough to survive,” said Mary Anyango, a fish-seller and mother of seven who lives in Dunga, a village on the Kenyan shores of Lake Victoria.

“This is the main reason why my 26-year-old daughter migrated to Saudi Arabia in January 2021. She works as a domestic worker for a Saudi family and earns 28,000 Kenyan shillings ($250) a month; about five times what I earn selling fresh fish at the local market.”

Lake Victoria is the world’s largest tropical freshwater lake and the largest lake in Africa. It lies in Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya and supports the livelihood of 40 million people in the three East African countries.

But dramatic ecosystem changes caused by unsustainable fishing practices – including overfishing and the use of undersized nets that catch fish before they reach maturity – alongside rapid population growth, and pollution by wastewater, agro-pesticides, and fertilisers threaten the future of fishing in Lake Victoria.

“There are a lot of issues happening upstream”, said Brian Waswala, a wildlife and landscape ecologist at Kenya’s Maasai Mara University. He told Al Jazeera that most of the freshwater feeding Lake Victoria comes via rivers in farming regions where agro-pesticides and fertilisers are used in large quantities to increase yields of produce such as coffee and tea.

Chemicals entering the relatively shallow lake have a negative impact on the ecosystem and fish stocks and make it “less and less viable” to make a living from fishing, Waswala said. Therefore, cash-strapped families have started to allow young women to migrate to the energy-rich Gulf region where they predominantly work as domestic workers and earn more money than they would at home.

“The situation forced our children to migrate,” said Ali Juma, a secretary at the Kenya National Fisherfolk Association (KENAFA) whose two daughters have been employed in Saudi Arabia. Juma worked as a fisherman for about 30 years and said he “expects the worst” if nothing is done to preserve Lake Victoria.

Waswala says a new approach is essential to protect the lake’s environment.

“People upstream either ignore or just do not care about their actions’ impact downstream,” he said.

“It is time that we look at the environment in a different perspective because it is the cornerstone for social and economic development.”

The lake provides direct employment for more than 800,000 people, according to the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO), an Uganda-based institution coordinating fisheries and aquaculture resources in East Africa. But the macroeconomic outlook is grim as the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the Kenyan economy, which contracted last year for the first time since 1992. [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
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“Most youth, even those unemployed, are not interested in working in the fishing industry - socially, it is not looked on highly. A graduate working on the lake is perceived as a nobody," said Ali Juma, a secretary at KENAFA. This is the case even though Kenya’s unemployment rate approximately doubled to 10.4 percent in the second quarter of 2020. "Youth look for greener pastures elsewhere," he said. [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
Villagers on the shores of Lake Victoria lament the limited contributions to the local economy from the Gulf, as migrant workers largely fail to invest at home in productive assets such as businesses. They instead focus on covering daily expenses, consumer goods, and renovating family houses. [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
In 2019, 102,331 metric tonnes of fish were caught from Kenya's inland fisheries - 95 percent of which was from Lake Victoria, according to Kenya Fisheries Service (KFS) data. Three species account for almost all of the fish caught: the Nile perch - introduced in the 1950s to grow the fishing industry which now supports about 2 million livelihoods - the Nile tilapia, and Dagaa. [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
“People simply cannot imagine Lake Victoria without fish, but the reality is fish populations are already on the verge of crashing. We harvest fish that have not even reached maturity,” warned Maasai Mara University’s Brian Waswala. A hydro-acoustic survey conducted in 2014 showed that about 94 percent of Nile perch in Lake Victoria are below the catch size limit of 50cm (20 inches). [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
The fast-spreading water hyacinth, which can cover up to 5 percent of the lake’s surface in Kenya, blocks out light and affects the oxygenation level of water in the lake. Waswala blamed the agriculture industry for the infestation. “They have proliferated due to the systematic use of chemicals and fertilisers upstream, which contain ingredients that activate water hyacinths to grow faster and in large numbers,” he said. Initiatives have focused on extracting the invasive floating plant from the water or using it for the production of bioenergy and animal feed. [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
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The majority of women working in Kenya’s fishing industry opt for a job onshore, mainly selling dry and fresh fish and fish-based dishes in local markets. Milka Akinyi, 51, has been selling dry fish since the late 1990s. But as middlemen capture market shares and ship fish to be processed in factories outside the Lake Victoria basin, local employment opportunities are diminishing. “It is becoming more and more complex,” Akinyi told Al Jazeera. Her 29-year-old daughter chose to migrate to Saudi Arabia for better employment opportunities. "Theresa is not interested in fisheries, just like her sister and four brothers. I always complain about my work, so maybe my children got the feeling that this industry is a hopeless case! Her plan is to earn money and come back home to pursue higher education.” [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
Energy-rich Gulf states record some of the world’s highest proportion of non-nationals in their labour markets - migrant workers represented 95 percent of Qatar’s total labour force in 2019 - and without the roughly 30 million foreign nationals, Gulf economies would come to a complete standstill. Predominantly from Asia and East Africa, migrants form the backbone of the Gulf economies, working as cab and delivery drivers, servers, cleaners, doctors, and bankers. Kenyan government estimates put the number of its citizens employed throughout the Gulf region at 100,000, but other sources estimate the figure to be closer to 300,000. [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
Kenya banned private recruitment agencies from sending domestic workers to any of the six Gulf Cooperation Council member states from 2014 to 2017 following reports of inhumane treatment of workers. It then signed bilateral labour migration agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, accredited 65 recruitment agencies, and mandated pre-departure training in state-accredited facilities. “Before, ladies would travel to the Gulf without prior training. Things have changed, they now complete a course before migrating”, said Stephanie Wacuka, training manager at the East African Institute of Homecare Management. In 2021, about 1,500 students attended pre-departure training offered by the institute in Kenya’s capital Nairobi. [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
“The training was useful! The instructors told us about Saudi Arabia’s local culture, the Muslim identity, how to communicate with our kafeel [sponsor], their cooking preferences, and ways to run a household so that when we go we already know something about them,” said Brenda Carol Adhiambo, 38, who migrated to the Gulf kingdom in February 2020. [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
Lake Victoria’s fisher communities gain economic benefits from Gulf migration to cover daily expenses, pay school fees and marriages, and build real estate. Zamaradi Yusuf stands next to the new family house funded by the work in Saudi Arabia of her two daughters. [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
Kenyan authorities encourage the development of fish farming as a sustainable alternative to traditional fishing. But villagers fear being excluded from the industry and that excess feeding on the bottom of the lake will further degrade water quality. Unlike traditional fisheries, industrial cage farming is often controlled by businessmen and industrial farms that are usually not in the Lake Victoria basin, further shrinking local employment opportunities and enhancing the attraction of migration to the Gulf. [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
Not every migration is successful. Brenda Carol Adhiambo, who travelled to Saudi Arabia’s Dammam in 2020, returned empty-handed to her village in early 2021 without completing the second year of her work contract. "I could not work as much as they wanted me to work, we are slaves there. My first employer told me: 'In fact, if I kill you neither the police nor the Kenyan embassy in Saudi Arabia would lift a finger.' I wanted to build a modern house for my seven kids, but I prefer to be in my simple mud house than serving [Saudi employers]," Adhiambo said. Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommended a temporary halt to the recruitment of domestic workers to Saudi Arabia in September 2021 as the death of 41 Kenyans were reported in the Gulf kingdom so far this year, up from just 3 cases in 2019. [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]
Musa Mbuya, left, 49, is bitter about the migration to Saudi Arabia of his twin younger sisters, Warda and Faouzia. “I saw on TV the mistreatment of girls in the Gulf region. I did not like it, but they insisted on going there for work.” Just three months after her arrival, Faouzia escaped, accusing her employers, a Saudi family, of mistreatment. The girls' mother, Fatuma Mbuya Rashid, right, 64, said: “During my time, nobody knew about the Gulf region. The local economy was better, we were self-sufficient. Nowadays, on the contrary, there are no jobs - that is why I allowed my daughters to go." [Sebastian Castelier/Al Jazeera]