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.
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https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/11/8/kenya-lake-victoria-fishing-industry-declines-spurring-gulf-migration