Lesson1:Diversify Income Sources for the Fisherfolk

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 specter of protein malnutrition in the lake basin has been raised by socioeconomists, an incredible irony in a place exporting nearly 200,000 tons of fish protein annually.

• Lake Victoria basin is used as a source of food, energy,

drinking and irrigation water, shelter, transport, and as a repository for human, agricultural and industrial waste. With the populations of the riparian communities growing at rates among the highest in the world, the multiple activities in the lake basin have increasingly come into conflict. This has contributed to rendering the lake environmentally unstable. The lake ecosystem has undergone substantial, and to some observers alarming changes, which have accelerated over the last three decades.