From medicinal soups to holiday gifts, fish maw from Uganda feeds huge Chinese demand. But the once thriving industry, awash with cartels and black markets, is struggling under the impacts of illegal fishing on a battered Lake Victoria and controversial new regulations. While government revenues have increased since a new export levy was installed in 2021, local fishing communities have been largely shut out of this lucrative trade.
This reporting project was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
INTRODUCTION:
Something fishy is going on in Ugandan waters.
It’s a hot January afternoon in Ssese Islands, Lake Victoria. Rows of small metallic structures gleamed in the after-lunch sun, originating a cacophony of sounds that hinted of the area’s varied economic activities: from solar batteries and television shops to local saloons, electronics repair stations and fashion models. A few strides down to the beach, a line of canoe-shaped wooden boats bobbed in the gentle waves, fishermen deftly sorting out intricate webs of yellow fishing nets.
This is Kananansi landing site, a remote waterfront community anchored at the terminus of Bugala Island, the largest of the 84-island archipelago comprising Uganda’s Kalangala district in Lake Victoria. The bustling fishing village emerges after a one-hour drive through swaths of oil palm plantations from the main ferry terminal connecting this central island to the mainland.
Despite the illusion of activity, all is not well in these freshwaters. Fish, the locals said, were no longer plentiful as before – putting at risk the fundamental source of wealth for this local economy.
Fishing boats docked at the Kananansi landing site, Bugala Island, Kalangala.
The chairperson of this landing site, who owns a fishing boat, said his daily catch is now meager. While prices of fuel to power the boat’s engine have increased, the fishermen he hires return from their daily ventures with small catches of the giant Nile perch fish that he sells to traders who supply factories for international export. Many other boat owners, unable to recover their investment costs, have left the business.
But this local leader confesses that something else is going on in the lake. While official catches remain low, the locals frequently discover Nile perch carcasses floating dead upon the waves, gutted of their insides. Oddly, these predator fish – once the country’s cash cow – are left discarded, as if worthless, in the waters.
The answer is well known to fish industry players: It’s a clear indication of the trade in fish maw, the swim bladder of the Nile perch: a seemingly innocuous organ that is fueling a booming international trade rife with huge sums of money, murky supply chains and illegality.
The maw is a clear, gas-filled organ, used to help the fish adjust their depth while swimming. Ugandan government officials have termed it the lake’s new gold. Relished in Chinese traditional cuisine, demand for fish maw from international markets skyrocketed after supply from the now-endangered Chinese croaker diminished following years of overfishing in East Asian waters.
Uganda now exports this prized product to Hong Kong, where it is then moved to China and other nearby markets. In 2022, 12 percent of Hong Kong’s maw imports originated from the landlocked East African country.
Uganda shares the 68,800-square kilometer Lake Victoria, the second-largest freshwater lake in the world, with neighboring countries Kenya and Tanzania. Unlike Uganda, both Kenya and Tanzania also have marine fisheries and sea ports on the Indian Ocean. Still, Uganda initially dominated the processing and export of maw, but a lack of regulations fostered rampant illegal maw exports, monopolies and overfishing of the prized Nile perch, once Uganda’s second-highest export earner bought by markets primarily in the European Union.
After President Yoweri Museveni publicly proclaimed the swim bladder’s value in 2020, government efforts ramped up to reign in the black market and ensure the country could benefit from this lucrative trade. In 2021, Uganda’s Fish (Amendment) Bill stamped an eight percent levy on maw exports.
But while revenues from tax-payers have since risen, officially recorded maw exports from Uganda have dropped, as companies have shifted their operations to neighboring countries with friendlier tax regimes. Local fishermen in Uganda also tell of stringent rules, cartels and monopolies by well-connected individuals that block them from entering the business.
At the same time, Ugandan catches of the whole Nile perch fish have also reduced, endangering the entire industry and the millions of people who depend on it. Today, the country’s Nile perch fisheries lives in memories of its former glory, while a few individuals reap big.
What is failing Uganda’s fish export industry, and why is the trade in swim bladder key to understanding this massive decline? Our investigation found that the lucrative trade in fish maw, dominated by powerful elites and foreigners, is being jeopardized by the overfished Nile perch, which has adapted to hunting pressure by shrinking in size. Yet, opportunities for Uganda to sustainably benefit from this aqua predator and its swim bladder are not lost – if regulations and management regimes prioritize gains for the lake’s closest guardians.
PART 1:
The Costly Delicacy: Uganda’s Nile perch exports plummet as the craze for ‘aquatic cocaine’ depletes fish populations
Deep in the heart of New York City’s Chinatown, a small mom-and-pop shop sells lovingly packed parcels of dried fish maws, the red, shiny packaging promising buyers “riches and honour,” and a “delicious,” “happy and harmonious” culinary experience.
The shop owner said she specially packed these translucent, balloon-like bladders- for family holiday gifts.
“Good product comes from good origin,” the packages boasted in gold English and Chinese lettering. At various Asian markets selling maws in the area, vendors advised the product should be boiled and added to chicken soup for the best health benefits, including promised rewards for bones, skin, joints and energy levels.
Ji Bei Chuan, a nearby restaurant chain famous for its fish maw chicken rice noodles, inscribes the illustrated “legend of crossing the bridge noodles” on its wall – a sentimental tale of a teacher in Yunnan, southwestern China, whose wife traversed a river with ingredients for the now-famous noodle soup, which the scholar would prepare for his class to enjoy a hot lunch.
Out of 17 Asian markets assessed in Manhattan’s Chinatown in early April, 11 sell imported fish maws, ranging from USD $238-$1,761 a kilogram. One store reported increasing its maw prices by more than 20 percent since the pandemic. Originating from South and Central America, southeast Asia and Africa, the maws are stored in jars with handwritten Chinese labels and are weighed and sold based on customer demand.
In New York, few jars labeled the maws’ origin countries, and even fewer the species. But one medicinal store, Wing Fat Company, was selling two containers of maws labeled “lates niloticus” – the scientific name for Nile perch, named after the Nile River, which predominate in habitats in eastern Africa. Priced at $178 and $288 a pound, the maws were on a store-wide special: 10 percent off. A bargain, relatively.
These cheery shops are one of the final destinations of fish maws’ convoluted supply chain, whose story starts from wild aquatic ecosystems in waters as far as New Zealand and Guyana, Senegal and Vietnam.
Hong Kong is one of the world’s primary collection points for maws, along with other legal and illegal seafood products such as abalone and shark fin. This special administrative region of China, unlike the neighboring mainland, has no import duties on seafood products, so there is “smuggling of a lot of products to China,” said Markus Bürgener, a senior programme coordinator at TRAFFIC, who co-authored the global NGO’s 2021 study of the fish maws trade from Africa to Hong Kong.
And for years, Uganda has ranked at the top of the list of Asia’s prized maw markets. From 2016 to 2023, 13 percent of Hong Kong’s imports of fish maw came from Uganda – its second highest country of import after Brazil, and encompassing 42 percent of total imports from Africa, according to import records kept by the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. Third was Vietnam, and fourth Tanzania, which supplied 11 percent of Hong Kong imports. Kenya, with the smallest segment of Lake Victoria, contributed 1 percent.
“Although globally there are several traditionally sought-after sources of maw, it appears that increasing demand coupled with declining supply from traditional sources have led to increased demand for Nile Perch maw. Over time, this has positioned the Lake Victoria region as an important source of maw,” revealed a 2021 guidelines document on the trade published by the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization, an East African Community (EAC) institution that coordinates management of the region’s fisheries.
Richard Matovu, the general secretary of the Uganda Fish Maw Traders Association- an umbrella body representing maw traders, said he helped inaugurate the business in 1987 when a friend from Kenya connected him to a businessman from Hong Kong interested in fish bladder.
“I had a woman friend… who put her own money [in the business] after her husband refused,” the traders’ boss narrated. “We started looking for this maw from rubbish bins in Kasensero. We had to send five kilos through DHL… They used to bounce, [even] four times, but the woman was so ambitious.”
After collecting the bladders, this pioneering team used to wash, sun dry and pack the products, shipping up to three tons to Hong Kong every two weeks. The business was booming, with prices per kilogram increasing from about USD $8, when they started out, to around $270 today.
“Those days, we had a lot of maw. We could open up the store, work up to midnight… we used to earn a lot from this,” he said. “I can mention so many families that had no future, but today they have doctors in their family who have gone to school because of fish maw.”
Those success stories include his own. With income from fish maw, Matovu paid school fees for his two children, who are now a doctor and an accountant.
But everything changed around three years ago.
“Today, you open up the store and there is no maw,” Matovu said. “Today, I don’t think you can take anyone to school with the maw.”
Fish maw in Uganda comes from freshwater lakes Albert, Kyoga and Victoria, with the majority extracted from the Nile perch (lates niloticus) in Lake Victoria, although it can also be collected from various croaker, catfish and carp species.
The fish maw traders association once comprised 25 member companies supporting about 500,000 people from all the lakes in Uganda, including 11 exporters along with other local companies. But today, Matovu said about three member companies have closed down, and “all of the others” have branches in neighboring countries where they conduct most of their work. The traders struggle to find buyers, even for smaller quantities of maw.
Uganda’s officially recorded exports of maw have also declined from a high in 2017-2018, according to data from both the United Nations trade database UN Comtrade and the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. But official data is unreliable, and seeming declines could also be caused by underreporting, “where people try to avoid taxes and tariffs in the exporting countries,” said Dr. Edward Rukuunya, the director of fisheries management and development at the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO).
Still, exporters shifting markets, trading illegally or leaving the business has not yet reduced the country’s overall earnings from export taxes, which saw a huge spike after Uganda’s Fish (Amendment) Bill 2021 tacked maw exporters with the new eight percent levy. The Uganda Revenue Authority’s annual report for fiscal year 2022-2023 shows a large jump in taxable export items, including fish fillets and fish maws, by almost UGX 58 billion (USD $15 million).
The product’s value per kilogram has also risen, according to Uganda imports recorded in both the Hong Kong and United Nations databases – reflecting the increasing global demand for the product.
At landing sites and in officials’ offices, a lot of mystery still surrounds the murky trade, which many fear to discuss openly.
The fish export business: from boom to bust
The Kasensero landing site had seen better days.
This fishing community along the shores of Lake Victoria, Uganda – just a short distance from its border with Tanzania, was once one of the country’s major fishing ports. But on a Wednesday in January, the landing site was unnaturally quiet, with only the sound of waves rhythmically lapping at the shore to break the silence.
Finally, in the early afternoon, a boat pulled in, and a flurry of activity ensued as the fishermen unloaded and weighed their recent catch. One fisherman held up a freshly caught Nile perch, which stretched almost to his shoulders. But this fish, like others in the batch, was still far too small, and the boat owner would not regain his investment in fuel and bait, said Morgans Junior, a former fish trader now involved in local tourism.
Thirteen trucks were stationed in rows, at least seven branded with words in Chinese characters, waiting to take the fish on ice to Kampala. But some trucks had parked for two weeks already, unable to fill their 5,000-kilogram loads, and might be forced to depart half-full, said Muhizi Robert, one of the truck drivers. He, as well, was wearing a shirt printed with a Chinese slogan.
The scene is a microcosm of Uganda’s battered fishing industry, a once thriving export economy that is now struggling to break even.
Although some fossil evidence suggests that Nile perch lived in Lake Victoria millions of years ago, the current population was reintroduced to the lake in the 1950s-60s by the then-British colonial government, and the burgeoning predatorial population soon decimated more than 300 native cichlid fish species, to conservationists’ chagrin. But companies rejoiced, and the early twentieth century ushered in the country’s first Nile perch boom, with about 21 factories leading the processing and shipping of these enormous fish as gourmet fillets for primarily European plates.
It was a short-lived era. Unrestrained fishing besieged the lake. Illegal fishing nets proliferated, which have tiny holes that scoop up all sizes of fish – including fingerlings, and even breeding zones were not reprieved from hunting grounds. Fish stocks plummeted. By 2016, just five Nile perch factories remained in business, said Godfrey Ssenyonga Kambugu, the chairperson of the Association of Fishers and Lake Users of Uganda (AFALU), a civil society organization representing fishing communities.
“I even saw the president. We told him, ‘the fish is finished, and the factories are closing. I had 10 boats and now I have got none,’” Kambugu reminisced.
“That’s when he said ‘no, I’m taking it over,’ and brought in the FPU [Fisheries Protection Unit] to fight these illegalities.”
The army was deployed on the lake, and so began another era of constant, often ruthless enforcement. While fish stocks slowly crept up, fishermen complained of frequent beatings, even drownings, by the same forces trained to fight cross-border enemies.
Today, demand from new markets is complicating the dynamic. While legal Nile perch hunting techniques are “passive,” waiting for the fish to enter the trap, Nile perch fishers are not the only hunters on the lake. As a huge local market for mukene (small silver fish, a type of sardine) has sprung up in Uganda and other East African countries Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Burundi, the growing mukene fishing community has come into frequent skirmishes with Nile perch fishing boats over the same fishing grounds.
Also, tightly wound silver fish nets scoop up even the baby Nile perch – a phenomenon termed ‘bycatch’ that has only increased as fishermen have been enlightened on the perch swim bladder’s value in Asia.
“Internationally allowable bycatch is less than 1 percent,” but up to 50 percent of silver fish catches these days can be Nile perch, said Dick Nyeko, CEO of the Uganda Fish Processors and Exporters Association (UPPEA), an alliance of the country’s major fish factories.
Data tracking more than 1,500 fishing-related court cases from 2018-2023 provided by nine courts in Uganda found that about a third of fishing cases related to the capture of immature fish, with the highest number being charged in Lukaya, Kalungu district that borders Lake Victoria.
According to Dr. Vianny Natugonza, a fisheries research scientist who co-led the development of a data portal tracking freshwater biodiversity for the National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFIRRI), regular fish stock assessments show that the number of Nile perch in the lake is stable, but its population is now dominated by small-size individuals: a natural response to years of intense fishing pressure that has targeted mainly the largest fish.
“Any population can respond differently to any stressor. For instance, if you have animals in a national park and subject them to extreme hunting, naturally you hunt the big individuals and then have a population dominated by small individuals. In order to survive, they must reproduce early,” Natugonza said. “You have pulled out the gene for the big individuals and remain with a population dominated by small sizes.”
But Dr. Rukuunya of the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization said data now shows Nile perch stocks declining along with shrinking. “This could be from the fact that the species is being over targeted to satisfy the fish maw market,” he said.
He said around the world, fish maw has been termed “aquatic cocaine” because of its high value and links with the decimation of fish populations.
“It’s clearly known that wherever fish maw trade exists, the species that provides the maw gets extinct. It is a good that is lucrative, but its outputs are short-lived,” he said.
At Kasensero, the number of boats stationed at the site reduced from 400 to 310 in the last two years, according to Kayumba John, the Kasensero Boat Owners Association chairman. Nile perch price per kilogram is set based on the total size of the fish, with a 50-kilogram fish selling at UGX 28,000-30,000 (USD $7.5-8) per kilogram, and smaller fish selling at just 11,000 ($3) a kilogram, which partly reflects the much higher value of bigger maws. Under this scale, profits dramatically decrease when the fish sizes shrink.
Fresh maws valued at USD $210-270 come from larger Nile perch of length around 50-80 centimeters, while smaller maws were valued at just USD $40-55: an almost 6-fold increase in price for the bigger maws, which drives depletion of bigger fish, reported a 2023 study by NaFIRRI and the University of Iceland.
According to data reported by Uganda on UN Comtrade, the country’s Nile perch exports fell by a third in four years, from almost 32,000 tonnes in 2017 to about 10,700 tonnes in 2021.
By November 2023, membership of the Uganda Fish Processors and Exporters Association (UFPEA), which brings together most Nile perch fish factories, had halved – from 22 companies to just 11, said its CEO Dick Nyeko. Four of these were his own businesses. Some of the others, Nyeko alleged, had left the association and its sustainability bylaws “because they want to process illegal fish.” Now, membership has further dwindled to just nine companies, according to the association website.
In November 2023, Tom Bukenya, the acting director of fisheries resources, addressed a letter to various fisheries institutions including AFALU, NaFIRRI, UFPEA, and the army calling for an emergency meeting to discuss the worrying situation. Issues of bycatch, fish maw traders in the islands, and the large export of immature fish to DRC were on the table, said Kambugu, the AFALU chairperson.
In February, Hellen Adoa, the minister of state for fisheries, put an immediate ban on all methods of fishing the silver fish other than ‘scoop nets’ during the dark nights of the month. But members of parliament representing fishing communities said that security forces were not well sensitized to implement the directives, and many mukene fishers complained of being unfairly targeted.
Lovin Kobusingye, the head of the Uganda National Women’s Fish Organization, said the difference in wealth and power between the Nile perch fishers and those dealing in mukene – 70 percent of whom are women – must be considered in these dynamics.
“The people doing Nile perch are big players; they have factories; they have money. The local people are the ones doing the mukene. They [Nile perch fishers] want to be the only fishers on the lake. The way God made the lake it’s an interesting story, we are all co-managers of the lake, we all have to stay and work together. All of us have equal share, there’s no one who is more powerful and superior,” she said.
But she said the lake was “highly controlled” by “mercenaries” and “guns.”
Click HERE for PART TWO and HERE for PART THREE of the story
