Local efforts to restore the ecosystem of Lake Victoria, the world’s second biggest lake, also aims to reduce gender-based violence.
With fishing stocks collapsing on the lake, recent decades have seen the emergence of Jaboya culture where women, who make up 90% of fish traders, engage in transactional sex as one of the strategies to get access to the catch from fishermen.
Leonard Akwany, volunteer coordinator at Ecofinder Kenya and freshwater director at Conservation International, says that the restoration of fisheries resources is not only critical in terms of freshwater biodiversity, food security and secure livelihoods; but critical in empowering women and reducing the pressures that lead to Jaboya culture.
“Less fish means more gender-based violence as manifested through sex-for-fish or Jaboya culture,” he says, adding that’s one reason why local women are strong force and supporters of fisheries conservation work.
More than 75 per cent of the biodiversity endemic to Africa’s Lake Victoria is at the risk of becoming extinct, according to a 2018 report International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Akwany’s new project will be implemented in the Winam Gulf area covering Kisumu, Siaya – the hometown of Barack Obama’s father – and Busia Counties in western Kenya and will target three Critically Endangered native fish species: Ngege, Mbiru and Ningu.
“Our work pivots around protection of freshwater fish species but also associated wetlands, endemic papyrus birds and seme-aquatic antelope; Sitatunga,” he says.
The plan is to create a 3,000 hectare community-managed fishery reserve and implement grass-root interventions in fishing villages of Lake Victoria to control overfishing and aquatic environment degradation.