Abstract:

The Nile perch (Lates niloticus) is a fish weighing up to 440 pounds, that grows to
lengths of up to six feet, and whose natural range is in Africa’s lakes: Turkana, Volta, Maryut,
Chad, and the rivers: Niger, Senegal, Nile, and Congo. In 1954, British colonial authorities under
the Uganda Game and Fisheries Department introduced the fish into Lake Victoria intending to
reduce the overfishing of tilapia, to develop the fishery’s profitability, release a fish similar to a
prehistoric one that once lived in Lake Victoria, and to introduce a fish to prey on
haplochromines1
. The introduction of the fish has had a variety of political and social
consequences producing a series of entities who win as a result of the Nile perch introduction,
and a set of entities that lose and have been adversely affected by the introduction. What has seen
adverse effects from introduction policy includes: the ecology of Lake Victoria, the traditional
fishing communities of the Lake Victoria Basin (LVB), the governments who administer Lake
Victoria, and Lake Victoria’s commercial fishery