Purpose and Background

During November 5-7, 2019, the African Center for Aquatic Research and Education and its in-country hosts, the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization and the National Fisheries Resources Research Institute held the African Great Lakes Stakeholder Workshop.

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Members from all ten African Great Lakes riparian countries (Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia) were in attendance, as were freshwater experts from the Belgium, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States. In all, there were 92 participants. 

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The workshop's goals were to create lake-specific advisory groups of freshwater experts on each African Great Lake to serve as mechanisms for consistent, regular, and extensive collaboration and communications.

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The workshop was a resounding success with six advisory groups being created by members of each lake's riparian country:

• The Lake Albert/Edward Advisory Group

• The Lake Kivu Advisory Group

• The Lake Malawi/Niassa/Nyasa Basin Fisheries and Aquaculture Advisory Network

• The Lake Tanganyika - Scientific Advisory Group

• The Lake Turkana Advisory Group

• The Lake Victoria Advisory Group

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Each advisory groups will identify the most pressing research needs on each of the African Great Lakes. 

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Research today is about partnerships and networks to share data, ideas, infrastructure, and, where necessary, costs. Researchers need to collaborate across disciplines and among universities and organizations around the world. Big questions and big problems require international efforts. Collaborative research networks constitute the basis for international understanding.

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The workshop was a direct result of efforts in identifying challenges on the African Great Lakes and looking at successful collaborations on multi-jurisdictional lakes, including the Laurentian Great Lakes' Lake Committee process on which this process is based; the collaboration on Lake Victoria, coordinated by the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization; and the collaboration on Lake Tanganyika through the Lake Tanganyika Authority. 

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The critical outcome of this workshop was the creation of a long-term process for consistent and regular collaboration and communications among experts on each African Great Lake

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Each lake advisory group is tasked with:

• Prioritization of research and research needs

• Harmonization of:

  • Research approaches and data collection

  • Existing research resources, stations, and personnel

• Accumulation of financial and research resources, from regional and global resources, to address prioritized research on each African Great Lake

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The purpose of this process is so each lake can produce long-term, comparable, and peer reviewed data that can be used to positively influence policy and management.