The Ngamiland fishery has become the lawless
‘wild west’ of Botswana and government needs to act before the next fishing
season begins at the end of this month.
In 2010 the
Tahal group presented a bold idea to Botswana Ministry of Agriculture, that part
of the 420 mcum of water that would be taken from the Zambezi as part of the
country’s riparian rights would be used for an integrated agricultural project
which would include amongst other things a maize, soy and canola industry in Pangematenga which would in turn be
used to develop an industrial poultry export industry as well as an aquaculture
industry that would export some 13,000 tonnes of fish per annum. The fish that would have been exported would
include tilapia and catfish. But the
very idea that Botswana, a landlocked semi-desert would become a major exporter
of fish products was just a step too
far. Successful public officials are described with many adjectives, but
certainly bold is not one them. This idea of a Botswana fish export sector was
simply beyond the pale for those in the Ministry of Agriculture and the idea was just
too bold, too risky and was canned.
Botswana’s Fish export industry – its in
the pooh!
But now,
without a litre of water being abstracted from the Zambezi and without even
much investment Botswana is silently becoming a significant exporter of unknown
quantities of Tilapia and catfish to water rich countries like Zambia and DRC.
The interesting question is how and why. Next month the 2015 fishing season
will begin again on Lake Ngami which has come back to life in 2011 after a
period of 20 years. The reason why the lake has become such a prolific producer
of fish recently is because in the 20 years that it was dry it was used by
local cattle farmers to graze their cattle. When the waters finally returned
the cattle dung provided a rich source of nutrients for the fish coming in from
the Okavanago River and breeding locally.
At the end of the month my friends and
relatives will return to Lake Ngami to fish for catfish and tilapia which will
then be exported to the DRC and Zambia. This in turn raises an interesting but disturbing
question. Both these countries are correctly described as ‘water abundant’ and
indeed the Congo and Zambezi rivers were long considered one of the most
important sources of fish for the local populations in the two countries. So
why do either of these countries need Botswana’s fish? The reason is simple
enough- they managed their fish stocks as badly as we almost certainly will and
there are not enough fish left any more for the locals so they now import
tilapia from a semi-desert country like Botswana.
When Lake
Ngami came back to life in 2011 after a very long dry patch urban consumers of
fish in Francistown, Maun and Gaborone
were delighted at the sudden influx of what were then relatively cheap fish
from the lake. But since last year there
have been major changes in the way fishing is going on there as increasingly
fishers are finding that they can get much better prices from the hundreds of
Zambian and Congolese ’salters’ that live in tents by the side of the lake. When
I drove from Maun to Ghanzi in September there were hundreds living in a tent camp
by the side of the road. According to local experts there were eleven camps
surrounding the Lake with what are said to around 1,000 people in all. In 2014 the largest, with a population of 400
looked like a refugee camp with scores of crowded tents. So how over 1,000
Congolese Zambians, Zimbabweans and Malawians receive work and residence
permits to do the ‘technically difficult’ job of gutting and salting fish in
Botswana is a matter the Immigration department probably needs to explain to
Batswana
Ms Neo Ntshwabi - Exporter of the Year?
The fact is
that there is more money to be made in the international trade in Tilapia and
catfish than there is in catching the fishing and selling them locally. About
300 Batswana get permits to fish and Zambians and Congolese now buy the fish
caught and salt them by the side of the road.
A medium sized fish costs about P2-3 by the side of the lake and when
sold in Gaborone it can sell for up to P8-10. But when Batswana eat fish it is
either fresh or frozen but certainly not salted. If you can dry and salt the
fish and get it to Lubumbashi in the DRC you can treble the price according to Ms Neo Ntshwabi
who sells fish to the Department of Education in Katanga . Four times a year
Neo drives her fish 1,700 km to DRC where she sells 6,000 fish per trip at what
she reports in $3/fish ( P27/fish) . On this basis she brings home a healthy
gross income USD72,000 per annum. While costs eat up much of this it
leaves enough to pay for a home for her and her two children.
But one needs to stop a moment and ask how many
people would be willing to drive from Botswana to DRC let alone carrying large
bags of dried fish. In my estimation Neo is a truly heroic Motswana woman and
really deserves an award as ‘exporter of the year’ for having the guts and
determination to do business no matter how hard it may be. Like so many women
in this country she has to raise her children with little help from their
father.
But if you believe
the statistics from Statistics Botswana, and most analysts in Ngamiland don’t, the
country does not export fish in any quantity. The figures suggest a total of
300 tonnes of fish were exported to Zambia and onto Katanga in the DRC in up to
November 2014 at a value of less than P1 million. These are the figures reported
by BURS at Kazangula. Either BURS is not
receiving the proper value and volume figures for the fish leaving the country or
the big sixteen wheel trucks full of fish that leave Maun regularly during the
fishing season along with 1,000 plus Zambian and Congolese workers must be
making a huge loss.
No
Zambian and Congolese salters need apply
The government
might wish to co-ordinate several departments to properly regulate the northern
fisheries. Lake Ngami and other smaller lakes in the vicinity of the Okavango
like Lake Xhau need to be carefully controlled. Fisheries officials need to
police the number of fishers and carefully monitor the size of nets that they
use along with the actual number of fishers per licence. Immigration needs to
make sure that these Zambians and Congolese are in the country legally and BURS
needs to record the real value and volume of fish leaving the country. The Ngamiland fishery has become a lawless ‘wild
west’ of Botswana and government needs to act before the next fishing season
begins at the end of this month.
The Lake Ngami
fishery is completely unsustainable as the lake will one day disappear as it
has in the past. But it is also
unsustainable because the rate of extraction of fish is not controlled and Batswana
are no better or worse at management than most people- almost no country has
succeeded in sustaining this sort of fishery but it should certainly be the
right of Batswana and not Zambians and
Congolese to benefit from the fisheries and the greatest commercial benefit is
in the trading far more than it is in the fishing. The real danger to the
ecology of Botswana is of course that once the foreign traders have arrived
they will shift away from Lake Ngami once it is overfished and then do the same
to the eco-system of the Okavango. That would be of far greater concern to the
economic future of the country.
These are the views of Professor Roman
Grynberg and not necessarily those of any institution with which he may be
affiliated. For the purposes of transparency Ms Neo Ntshwabi is a cousin of his
wife Ms Doris Shalie Grynberg.
