Fish are among the most important renewable natural resources in many countries of the Eastern/Central/Southern Africa. However, fishery scientists are always worried about the tragedy of this common property resource which everybody uses and no one conserves. In this paper African Great Lakes include: Mobutu Sese Seko/Albert, Edward (also known as Idi Amin), Kivu, Malawi (Nyasa), Tanganyika, Victoria and Turkana (formerly lake Rudolf). Consideration is also given to fisheries of shallow lakes.
The initial phase of exploiting fish stocks of the African Lakes was marked with use of rudimentary fishing materials: baskets traps and spears and the catch was mainly for subsistence. During this phase, prior to the twentieth century, fish stocks were under-exploited.
The development phase of the fisheries of the African Great Lakes corresponds to the first decade of this century when gillnets were introduced, for example, on Lake Victoria in 1905. However for many lakes, the over-exploitation phase began about 50 years ago, a period of rapidly increasing fishing population and high demand for fish products. Within the past 50 years there have been a number of control measures and unified regulations exemplified by Lake Victoria. There was lack of acceptance by the fishermen.
The current situation of exploited stocks is gloomy. Most of the originally profitable species in Lakes Mobutu Sese Seko, Victoria, Tanganyika and Turkana show sign of depletion from either fishing stress or increased predation owing to haphazard species transplantation.
In the case of Lakes Victoria and Kyoga a number of fish trophic groups have disappeared, stressing the ecosystems even farther. Fortunately, the exotic Nile perch is still booming. It is, however, difficult to say how long Nile perch will continue to dominate other species considering the truncated food-web pyramid, the intensive fishing effort and presence of another predator Micropterus salmoides which has appeared in the lake.
