Raila calls for review of Lake Victoria boundary

President William Ruto and Former PM raila Odinga launch the modern fish market in homabay. [PCSU] ODM leader Raila Odinga has called for a Lake Victoria boundary review between Kenya and Uganda to avert perennial insecurity issues. Raila said the boundary issue is a very contentious one that the government must take up and properly resolve. Speaking in Homa Bay County during a blue economy summit at Tom Mboya University yesterday , Raila also condemned the constant harassment of Kenyan fishermen in the lake. He argued that the government must come up with an agreement with its Uganda and Tanzania counterparts allowing Kenya fishermen to safely fish in Lake Victoria. "In 1971, there was a coup in Uganda and Iddi Amin took power. In his decision, he took Kenyan islands and made them Uganda and said the border between Kenya and Uganda was in Naivasha and that he was going to redraw the boundary. He, however, never realized his dream, but that situation is the cause of our boundary problem today. Where is the border between Kenya and Uganda in the lake?" he questioned. Raila said that the government must resolve the problem of fishermen's harassment in Lake Victoria. "In the Indian Ocean, we have Japanese and Koreans fishing in our waters, and we do nothing about it. Why should Kenyan fishermen be harassed when they just cross the border? We need an agreement to know where the border is," he noted. In his speech, President William Ruto said, for a long time, the blue economy space has not been developed sufficiently to contribute meaningfully to the country's gross domestic product, food security, jobs, and the economy. "It is for this reason that we have organised this sector better now. In the past, these Beach Management Units (BMUs) were social organisations dealing with social issues, but we realise it is not possible to organise this sector without stakeholders, who are the fisherfolk," President Ruto said. Dr Ruto noted that his government had transformed the BMUs in Kenya by registering all of them. Ruto pointed out that the blue economy has the potential to boost the country's wealth, food security, and creation of jobs. He said the sector had been neglected for long, making it incapable of meaningfully contributing to the country's economy. "Today, the blue economy is contributing between Sh30 billion and Sh40 billion yet the potential is between Sh300 billion and Sh500 billion a year. We are very far from attaining the true potential of the blue economy," he said. "Over the past three years, we have completed four fish landing sites along the Indian Ocean coast and three along Lake Victoria. In addition, we are building five more along the coast and nine along Lake Victoria," he said. Raila also claimed that during previous negotiations, it came out that the coordinates of the boundary between Kenya and Uganda are based on River Sio, a river that changed its course and moved back to the Kenyan side by several kilometres years ago. "When I was the Prime Minister, we appointed a team led by the then Minister for Lands James Orengo and then Minister of Foreign Affairs Moses Wetang'ula, who were tasked to carry out negotiations with Ugandan counterparts, and those negotiations took place," he said. "Now Ugandans are saying we need to measure from where River Sio is today but in those days it was somewhere else," the former PM added.

Raila calls for review of Lake Victoria boundary

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