The Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO) is an institution of the East African Community with the mandate to promote Sustainable Management and Development of Fisheries and Aquaculture Resources in the East African Community for Food Security and Wealth Creation.
The purpose of the Catch Assessment Surveys (CAS) in Lake Victoria is to provide scientific information necessary for provide deliver a set of indicators to aid policy formulation, development planning and management plan evaluation. The Assessment System provides sets of indicators to deliver important information to help assess the value of the fishery and its different components, monitoring removals and changes in fishing effort, monitor changes in the abundance of key species and provide estimates of fishing efforts that maximize production, economic rent or employment in the harvest sector. Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO), with financing from EU Implementation of Fisheries Management Plan (IFMP) project and Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project Phase Two (LVEMP-II), has been coordinating CAS on a regular basis from 2005 to 2015. However, due to the high cost of implementing the survey and limited funding, no CAS was conducted after 2015.
Recent development of mobile phone technology and internet have opened up new low cost channels of data collection and dissemination to allow timely data capture, analysis and reporting, especially in the fisheries sector. Since then, efforts both at regional and national levels were geared towards developing a system in which CAS data can be collected on regular basis at a reduced cost to inform the management and development of the fisheries of Lake Victoria. In the first phase, the E-CAS System was developed at national level in Tanzania, with funding of “The Nature Conservancy” (TNC) under the project titled ‘Development and use of an electronic fish catch assessment system for the African Great Lakes (AGL)’. The system was further expanded under the funding of GIZ funded project titled ‘Responsible Fisheries Business Chains’ (RFBC) project to include Kenya and Uganda databases, after which the three national databases were combined to constitute a regional database hosted at LVFO Secretariat, Jinja Uganda.
The E-CAS system was launched officially on 6th March 2020, at Best Western Plus-Meridian Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya. The launching was attended by LVFO members of Senior Officials, Ministry in Charge of East African Affairs, Lake Tanganyika Authority, GIZ-RFBC Project Manager, Database Developers, Members of the CAS Regional Working Group and LVFO. The objective of launching was to officially kick-start a new system for Catch Assessment Surveys on Lake Victoria. The system is designed for real time data capture, analysis and timely reporting. It consists of two synergistic applications namely mobile and web. The mobile is mainly to serve as a data capture in the field while the web application is best suited for reporting and system management. To serve the fishery in its totality, E-CAS is designed as a multi-module system with potential to accommodate an unlimited number of data sets including Hydroacoustic surveys, Socioeconomics, Aquaculture, Marketing among several others. The interrelated and interactive nature of these datasets is facilitated by this system, and thus improving the usability of the different datasets for fisheries management. Therefore, the system is very important to provide timely information to guide the sustainable management and development of fisheries for wealth creation, employment and food security for betterment of East African citizens.
For More information, please contact:
LVFO Secretariat
Plot 7B/E Busoga Square
Bell Avenue
P.O. Box 1625
Jinja, UgandaTelephone: +256 434 125 000
Email: lvfo-sec@lvfo.org
