According to a 2013 report, from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), it was revealed that if Kenya utilized all 1.4 million hectares identified as suitable for fish farming, Kenya can produce 14 million tonnes of fish a year with a value of Sh50 billion.
Kenya gets its fish from sea and inland sources. In 2016, inland sources made up 73 per cent of total production, marine sources 17 per cent and 10 per cent was from fish farms.
Data shows Lake Victoria was the biggest inland source in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
In 2016 the lake produced 90.7 per cent of the local harvest, a rise from 81.9 per cent in 2012.
When Uhuru Kenyatta tried (rightly or wrongly) to protect the Lake Victoria fishing industry against a flood of tasteless, farm-reared tilapia from China, China threatened to end all financial relations with Kenya. Uhuru capitulated within six hours. Is that sovereignty?
— Adrian Blomfield (@adrianblomfield) May 13, 2019
In October 2018 President Uhuru Kenyatta hinted at a ban, saying Kenya needed to find “out of the box” ways to limit the imports.
China’s ambassador reportedly described the ban as a “trade war” and threatened sanctions. He later softened his tone. “We hope that the issue of fish imports will be resolved in an amicable way,” Zhang Gang, a spokesperson for China’s embassy in Kenya, told Africa Check as the controversy raged. “As a strategic partner of Kenya, China will not engage in a trade war.”
But the Department of Fisheries took Kenyatta’s cue and said it would not approve applications to import tilapia, the fish most imported from China, from 1 January 2019. Weeks later the department reversed the decision “to allow further consultations”.
The move to curb imports also came amid reports claiming Chinese fish imports contained poisonous heavy metals.
In its budget statement the Treasury said it was “not true that fish from China has mercury.”
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has urged the government to scale up aquaculture farming in the wake of dwindling fish stocks in Lake Victoria.
FAO fisheries coordinator in Kenya Alice Jesse said the country has the potential to produce fish through aquaculture. (Aquaculture is the farming of fish, crustaceans, molluscs, aquatic plants, algae, and other organisms.)
Jesse said the government can increase fish stocks through aquatic farming and stop the importation of fish from China.
The country imports approximately 1.8 million kilogrammes (1,800 tonnes) of fish every month. It produces about 135,000 tonnes annually against a demand of 500,000 tonnes.
Fish imports from China were worth Sh1.7 billion last year.