The present document is the Report of the Symposium on Socio-economic aspects of Lake Victoria fisheries. The Symposium was held in Kisumu, Kenya, from 25 to 27 April 1990. It was sponsored by the UNDP/FAO Inland Fisheries Planning (IFIP) project and organized in the interval of time separating the Fifth and the Sixth Session of the CIFA1 Sub-Committee for Lake Victoria.
Indeed, at its last session in Mwanza, Tanzania, in October 1989, the Sub-Committee recommended that more emphasis be put on socio-economic investigations and that such meeting be organized to allow an exchange of information and experience among researchers and administrators of the three riparian countries.
The Symposium was opened by the Kenyan Minister for Regional Development Hon. Midika who reviewed the recent developments of Lake Victoria's fisheries and pointed out the importance of the meeting and of regional collaboration in general in ensuring the sustained and socially equitable development of these nowadays very important fisheries.
In structuring the agenda (Annex 1), it was decided to focus on the following broad subjects: (i) Harvesting sector; (ii) Supply of fishing inputs; (iii) Processing and marketing; (iv) Industrial sector; (v) Socio-economic studies and related research programmes; and (vi) Management and related research programmes.
The Symposium was attended by 36 participants from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and FAO (Annex 2). Twelve papers were presented for which abstracts are given in Annex 3. These papers together with a number of papers prepared by some Tanzanian researchers who due to unforeseen circomstances could not attend, will be issued in a separate publication.
The main conclusions and recommendations adopted by the Symposium are given in Section II below.
1 Committee for Inland Fisheries of Africa
