The Constraints of the Artisanal Fishing Industry in Lamu District

This proposal explores the challenges of the artisanal fishing industry along the northern coast of Kenya in hopes of generating community informed recommendations for transforming and revitalizing the industry. This proposal is written in hopes of empowering Lamu coastal communities to capitalize on their own resources. In general, along the Kenyan coast, inshore marine productivity is declining. Fisheries data confirms a declining trend over the past 10 years, with daily fish catch declining from an average of 50 kilos per fisherman per day to 10 kilos per day to sometimes no catch at all. Local fishermen confirm the declining productivity and acknowledge the increasing population of participants in the industry. This has perpetuated the decline of the inshore environmental and economic resources. Contributing to the perplexity of the situation, offshore marine resources are abundant and vastly underdeveloped. But local fishermen are disempowered and unable to develop these vast offshore coastal marine resources that have been largely underutilized. They lack adequate equipment—boats, engines and nets, the ability to preserve and process their products and the basic infrastructure to successfully market their catch in national or international markets. Fishermen and dealers lack the educational and management resources to effectively organize themselves in order to sustain and remain in control of what could be a profitable industry. Under current circumstances, subsistence inshore fishing drives a cycle of poverty along the coast that inhibits the development of a sustainable fishing economy. In addition, the coastal fishing industry has been largely neglected by national and international investors and by the Kenyan government as a whole. This proposal seeks to challenge this and recommend ways in which Kenya’s artisanal fishing industry can be transformed to not only empower coastal communities, but to contribute significantly to the growth of Kenya’s national economy as a whole. This proposal seeks to identify ways in which the artisanal fishing industry can be sustained and driven from within coastal communities, giving them the resources and education to effectively improve their lives.