A social analysis of contested fishing practices in Lake Victoria

Thesis abstract The thesis explored how the global market for Nile Perch fish has reconfigured the social and the natural in dramatic ways. The demand for Nile Perch and Dagaa played, willingly or unwillingly, an important role in converting its products into regionally and globally desired commodity. It has also simultaneously restructured the organisation of fisheries into a complex and aggressively managed sector. In fishing and fish trade, one needs to externalize costs and risks to the lower actors in the production and business hierarchy. From an historical point of view, power has shifted from many points of coordination and decision making into a few hands, those that own fishing camps and export processing factory. Moreover, illegal fishing and trading are continuous and corruption is rife to safe guard individual interest in turn shaping the local practices (governance) of Lake Victoria. Finally the debate about fisheries policies and fisheries regulation in L. Victoria does not address local realities and are largely irrelevant and that the real focus of power and driver of change is the international and regional markets for Nile Perch and Dagaa and global players with a lot of capital.