by LUCAS LIGANGA
Mwanza. It rose from the ashes to become the backbone of the Lake Zone economy, supporting 300,000 livelihoods directly and another 3 million indirectly, but the Nile perch is now on the brink of extinction, posing a serious threat to Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest fresh water lake.
The Nile perch, or Lates niloticus, as it is known scientifically, is a large freshwater fish introduced in Lake Victoria in 1954 by the British government to increase the fish population and can grow to a length of two metres and weigh 200 kilogrammes.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, before the introduction of fish processing plants in Lake Zone regions, Nile perch, or sangara as it is known among locals here, was virtually valueless and was favoured mainly by ordinary families, which could not afford more expensive fish like tilapia.
But between 1992 and 2004, the Nile perch’s status rose dramatically, becoming a delicacy of the elite in European countries, thanks to findings by scientists that the fish has valuable Omega-3 fatty acids, which help to check heart problems and high blood pressure.
Today, nearly 22 years since the Nile perch was first exported from Tanzania, the situation is alarming following a sharp decline in stocks in Lake Victoria caused by, among other factors, overfishing.
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The Citizen has established that Kenya, which has only six per cent of Lake Victoria but more fish processing plants than Tanzania and Uganda, which jointly own 94 per cent of the lake, had greatly benefited from the ban imposed by Tanzanian government.
Courtesy of the porous border in Lake Victoria, smugglers from Tanzania have been ferrying thousands of tonnes annually to Kenya.
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