A review of Lake Victoria sardine products business and institutional arrangements for domestic and regional trade

Abstract

Effective and efficient business and institutional arrangements are essential for every industry to position the business ventures within the value chain, show how transactions are made among stakeholders and underlying economic logic for value creation. This review focused on the existing business and established support institutional arrangements for sardines (Rastrineobola argentea) from Lake Victoria in order to assess their influence on domestic and regional trade. The review established that the business arrangements between the crew members and boat owners in Tanzania influences revenue sharing among players; this was connected to poor performance of crew members, theft of fishing equipment, boat engines and portion of fish products by crew members. Sardines traders had not been able to access the lucrative outlets due to weak institutional support and lack of economies of scale. At the national and regional levels, the authors focused on the co-management of fishery resources through the Beach Management Units, national fishery policies, strategies and support institutional arrangements. At national level, the main limitation identified was poor performance of the Local Government Authorities in the aspects of surveillance, control, fisheries law enforcement as well as close monitoring and inspection of fishing activities which led to depletion of the fishery resources and influenced trade performance. Furthermore, it was observed that at regional level, there was weak formal link between the Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC) and Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO) and this jeopardised the effective and efficiency management of fishery resources and efforts towards poverty alleviation.