
In 2004, when Kenya and Uganda almost went to war over the ownership of Migingo Island President Yoweri Museveni remarked that the water around the island was Kenyan and the fish Ugandan. The territorial dispute, out of the blues, gave the fish in Lake Victoria a nationality.
Whether in jest or fact, President added that the fish were “happier” because they are “Ugandan.” The remarks elicited fiery response from ordinary Kenyans as the government massed marines on the island to fend off Ugandan police who patrolled the Island.
The island is now a miniature theatre of Africa’s “smallest” – even world’s – war that is being fought in Kenya. The long running maritime dispute between Kenya and Uganda has receded into the remote recesses diplomacy and conflict t, giving the East African neighbours a semblance of armistice.
The deployment of police, military and even diplomats to quell the war that is “international’ in character and has been raging for the past 20 years and sucked in Kenyans, Ugandans, Tanzanians, Burundians, Ethiopians, Congolese and Russians, among others, has failed to put out the conflict that routinely starts at daybreak when fishermen set sail off Migingo Island into Lake Victoria to hunt for mbuta (Nile Perch).
Demand for Nile Perch has risen exponentially in East Africa and Europe, touching off vicious competition that – when need arises – involves use of the most modern weapons to ward off competition for the species that blamed for rapid decline of tilapia species that is endemic to the world’s second largest freshwater lake that measures approximately 62,000 square kilometres.
According to British newspaper, The Express, “The nano island measures just 0.49-acres – less than half an acre in size – but is home to 1,000 people and considered one of the most crowded communities in the world.”
Despite the vastness of the lake, it is in Migingo – a rocky island that measures just about the size of a football pitch – that has been making the news in Lake Victoria. The massive rock is a contested maritime boundary between Kenya and Uganda.
The island is on the northeastern side of Lake Victoria on the border between Uganda and Kenya and has been the subject of territorial disputes for decades. It may be tiny but it is at the centre of a decades-long territorial dispute between the two countries, The Express reports. The island was once the proverbial pinprick on the map, a speck in the ocean, of little concern to anyone.
“Nothing more than a rock jutting out of the water,” according to Emmanuel Kisiangani, a senior researcher at the Pretoria office of the Institute for Security Studies.
Dr Kisiang’ani says the island is now co-managed by the two countries, although tensions occasionally flare up over the football-pitch-sized islet, with locals branding it Africa’s “smallest war.” Frequent arrest of Kenyan fishermen has been a source a diplomatic tiff between Nairobi and Kampala that began just after first post-independence multiparty elections in Kenya in 2002 that had a spinoff effect in Uganda, where the electorate began agitating for the exit of President Yoweri Museveni, in power from 1986. The Migingo Island standoff provides a necessary deflection from agitation democracy in Uganda.
The dispute kicked off in earnest in 2004 when Uganda sent armed police to Migingo ostensibly to protect its fishermen from pirates but also to collect taxes for fishing rights. Kenyans sharing the island objected. Uganda raised the stakes by accusing Kenyan fishermen of crossing the border into Ugandan waters to catch fish. The Kenyans responded by saying they had traditionally fished there with no impediment. When Kenya sent marines to confront the Ugandan police the battle lines were drawn.
According to The Independent, “Around the turn of the current century, a handful of fishermen hoping to catch Nile perch – or mbuta – decided that instead of travelling out from the edges of the lake every day, they could stop over on Migingo, then occupied by only birds and snakes. As their catches grew, they were quickly joined by others mainly from Kenya, but also from Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Once only popular with locals, mbuta’s reputation has spread and it’s now found on the dining tables of plush European and American restaurants. Catching it has become lucrative, especially since the lake’s waters have been receding. Its shores have been overfished and have become clogged with rapidly growing water hyacinths. The fishing grounds in the deeper waters surrounding Migingo are now even more profitable.”
Recently, a Dubai-based filmmaker Joe Hattab made the tricky journey to the island by boat to make a short film about life there. He said he saw Kenyans and Ugandans “hanging out together”. The loss of the once-booming sea life in Lake Victoria had been a major blow to communities living along its shores in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, prompting locals to look for more reliable sources of fish.
Migingo was uninhabited at the time but gradually became known as a fertile fishing spot and other fishermen came from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as per the outlet.
“The island – smaller than a football pitch and at its highest only 15 metres above the water level – was soon covered in shacks which house hundreds and make it one of the most densely populated spots on the planet. In addition to fishermen, smugglers and pirates arrived, exploiting the suddenly booming population. Fours bars, gambling dens and a brothel are said to be among the businesses operating on Migingo, as is a pre-school creche and a pharmacy,” The Independent reports.
Nile perch, which are plentiful in waters around Migingo, had previously only been popular locally. But they’ve since become a valuable commodity, appearing on menus at swanky British and French restaurants, and only heightening the draw of the island for fisherman.
A striking mosaic of corrugated iron homes now covers the island, rising and falling with the contours of the landscape. It also has its own police force, as well as small clinic where a nurse treats minor issues, though for more serious medical problems, inhabitants have to travel to the Kenyan mainland.
According media and security reports, beyond the rapidly increasing difficulties of policing what was becoming a lawless island state, governments were starting to pay attention to Migingo. They had realised how profitable mbuta fishing rights were. But because the island fell almost exactly on the border between Kenya and Uganda which runs north-south down Lake Victoria, both nations suddenly found themselves locked in acrimony. Both claimed it as their own.
From his corrugated metal shack on the western tip of the island, boat owner David Kipkemei says: “Every so often the police show up but the people who live here just sit in the middle carrying on with their lives.” Around the lake shores though, political rancour prevails.
Since 1926 official maps have shown that the island is 510 metres east of the border, putting it firmly in Kenyan waters. But Lake Victoria is, of course, the colonial era monicker for the inland sea, which has many other names in local languages and dialects. And it may be that poor or thoughtless map drawing by the colonial powers in Africa has contributed to the dispute.
The Independent notes, “As the European powers began to leave the continent, the lines they had drawn on their maps often failed to take into account ethnicity, regional politics or the historical claims of local inhabitants. Newly independent nations were, in effect, left with the borders created by the departing colonial powers, however arbitrary these may have been.
It says that, while the Uganda government maintains that historical records are not clear, Kenya’s position is the opposite. The Kenyans have even threatened military force to occupy the island.
“Not only that, but sometimes the lines had been drawn very quickly. Cartography in the days of what became known as “the scramble for Africa” (or more truthfully, the scramble for Africa’s resources) was somewhat capricious and unaccomplished. Migingo is perhaps the diminutive version of a much bigger problem that has frequently led to violent encounters. Burundi and Rwanda, Sudan and South Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia are just a few of the hostile conflicts caused, at least in part, by colonial territorial legacies,” it adds.
Uganda has argued, with possible justification, that the British who drew the border line specifically to ensure the Lake Victoria to Mombasa railway remained wholly within Kenya for administrative simplicity, made errors when naming Migingo and two other islands close by. It argues that the description of what is known today as Pyramid Island (because of its shape) better fits the island of Ugingo which actually looks like a pyramid.
If Ugingo really is the “Pyramid Island” mentioned on the old colonial maps – rather than what today is considered Pyramid Island – then Migingo is actually in Ugandan waters, by just a few metres. In addition, Uganda insists it is in possession of other colonial maps putting Migingo on its side of the border although these have yet to be validated, the reports says.
- A Tell report / By Juma Kwayera