Chinese aquaculture tech helps people chart a new future on Lake Victoria

Framed by the rugged Gembe Hills in Homa Bay County, western Kenya, the tranquil waters of Lake Victoria are dotted with floating fish cages, their circular plastic rings and emerald-green nets creating the illusion of a second shoreline.

To visitors, the geometric patterns on Africa’s largest freshwater lake present a striking panorama.

Beyond the scenery, however, a quiet revolution is transforming lives. Modern aquaculture is increasing fish production, creating opportunities for young people, restoring dignity to women and weakening the grip of one of East Africa’s most enduring social problems — the “sex-for-fish” practice.

As dawn breaks over the lake, coxswains fire up their outboard engines and steer boats toward cages anchored offshore.

Within minutes, workers are feeding millions of fish, inspecting nets and preparing for the day’s harvest in an industry reshaping livelihoods along the lake.

The routine, now unfolding at hundreds of landing sites along Kenya’s Lake Victoria shoreline, would have seemed unimaginable little more than a decade ago.

Anchored between 100 meters and 1 kilometer offshore, floating cages made from high-density polyethylene, or HDPE — most manufactured in China — mark the waters in orderly rows.

Positioned in deep, well-flushed water, they create favorable conditions for tilapia, Kenya’s most widely consumed fish, while reducing pressure on shoreline ecosystems.

For generations, communities around Lake Victoria depended almost entirely on wild fish stocks. But years of overfishing, environmental degradation and climate pressures steadily depleted the lake’s fisheries.

As catches declined, competition intensified and many households struggled to survive.

The scarcity fueled one of the region’s darkest social realities: the “sex-for-fish” practice, in which some women traders were coerced into exchanging sex for access to fish controlled by fishermen.

Locally known as “Jaboya”, the practice has been identified by Kenya’s National Syndemic Diseases Control Council as a key driver of HIV vulnerability in Lake Victoria fishing communities, where transactional sex and low condom use continue to fuel infections.

That reality is now changing, driven by a combination of Chinese aquaculture technology, local entrepreneurship and community ownership.

Together, these forces are transforming how fish are produced and how communities earn a living, offering women greater economic independence and helping break cycles of exploitation.

As demand for tilapia continues to outstrip supply, more aquaculture operators are bringing women into production and turning the market gap into opportunities for income generation.

A new blue economy

At Nyachebe Beach in Homa Bay County, Chinese-invested company Global Tilapia operates one of Kenya’s largest commercial cage farms.

Its manager, Li Zepeng, who employs more than 100 local people, first arrived in Kenya in 2016 to run a food business.

Instead of abundant locally produced fish, he found imports from China and India filling Nairobi’s markets.

“I realized Lake Victoria had excellent water conditions for raising tilapia,” Li recalled.

Three years later, together with partners, he established what has become Homa Bay’s first large-scale Chinese-invested fish farm.

Today, the company operates 72 HDPE cages covering nearly 90,000 square meters of water and produces 4,000 to 5,000 metric tons of tilapia annually for supermarkets and wholesalers in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu.

Using modern production techniques, the farm completes two production cycles a year, compared with one at many conventional farms. Fish weighing just 3 grams reach an average market weight of 700 grams within six to seven months.

Li said the company plans to nearly double the number of cages on the lake, deepen partnerships with local farmers and invest in modern aquaculture technology to meet rapidly growing demand for farmed fish.

“Nearly half of our workforce is made up of women, who play a vital role across the value chain, from harvesting and sorting fish to descaling, gutting, processing and packaging. As we expand, we want even more women to benefit from the opportunities this industry is creating,” he said.

Women at the helm

More than 100 kilometers away, along the Winam Gulf near Kisumu, Kenya’s third-largest city, another transformation is taking shape.

Vincent Oduor, CEO of Aquaculture Barn Limited, has imported not only Chinese equipment but also ideas that seek to empower young women at Paga Beach on the edge of Kisumu.

Oduor traveled to China in December under the Global South Rural Entrepreneurship Program, joining participants from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Asian countries to study rural revitalization, agricultural mechanization and poverty reduction.

Visits to China Agricultural University in Beijing and several rural villages inspired him to adapt the ideas and technologies he encountered to local conditions.

“We saw villages where local people owned productive enterprises while the Chinese government provided the support and mechanization they needed,” he said.

“It showed us that expensive productive assets can still be made accessible if you have the right model.”

Those lessons laid the foundation for a “lease-to-own program”, designed to make commercial aquaculture accessible and profitable for communities long excluded from the blue economy by prohibitive start-up costs.

Instead of expecting low-income fishing communities to raise thousands of dollars to buy cages, Oduor’s enterprise provides the cages, fingerlings, feed and technical expertise upfront.

He manages four youth groups of about 15 members each, predominantly women aged 18 to 35, who contribute labor under arrangements that allow them to gradually acquire ownership of the cages.

After each harvest, part of the income repays the initial investment until the groups fully own the cages, transforming members from wage earners into entrepreneurs.

“Our approach reflects China’s philosophy of pairing technology with innovative financing to place productive assets in the hands of marginalized women, empowering them to transform poverty into prosperity and become drivers of the local blue economy,” he said.

Roseline Okanda, 22, is among the young women enrolled in the program, helping build a business she hopes one day to own.

“Our daily work involves feeding the fish, repairing the nets and closely monitoring their health to ensure they grow well,” she said.

“In the long run, the program will offer us a reliable income and reduced dependence on the sex-for-fish practice because we will be directly involved in fish production instead of waiting to buy fish after it is landed.”

Her group is repaying the approximately $10,800 cost of a cage in installments and aims to take full ownership within two to three years.

The work takes three to four hours a day, allowing members to pursue other income-generating activities while building long-term assets.

Oduor has also installed Chinese-made closed-circuit television cameras around his cages, enabling him to monitor the farm remotely and deter theft, a persistent challenge in Lake Victoria cage aquaculture.

Powered by solar energy, the surveillance system provides round-the-clock monitoring, reducing losses and reassuring workers that the fish remain protected when no one is on site.

“We installed Hikvision CCTV cameras from China to keep watch over the cages around the clock. Before, thieves could strike at night without anyone noticing,” Oduor said.

At Ramba Beach on Mfangano Island in Lake Victoria, Millicent Awuor, administrator of Lake View Fisheries Ltd, has witnessed the transformation firsthand.

As wild stocks decline, she said obtaining fish at traditional landing sites has become increasingly difficult, especially for women.

“The desperation that once drove some women into exploitative relationships just to secure fish has greatly reduced,” Awuor said.

Awuor, a University of Eldoret graduate with a bachelor’s degree in fisheries and aquatic sciences, said the system enables women to trade with dignity, earn an honest living and know their success depends on business rather than exploitation.

Innovation in action

Chinese technology is also addressing another long-standing challenge for fishing communities: preserving highly perishable catches.

Solar-powered ice production is helping reduce post-harvest losses, maintain fish quality and strengthen food security along Lake Victoria’s shores.

A modern plant imported from China is transforming preservation on Kenya’s Takawiri Island in Homa Bay County, where an unreliable power grid once left fishermen at risk of losing their catch before it reached market.

Using 72 solar panels, the equipment produces up to 120 kilograms of ice an hour, cutting operating costs and helping maintain fish quality from lake to market.

Jacob Ochieng, who operates the plant, known as Renewable Energy for Ice, said the facility was established two years ago and has become a vital supplier to fishermen and traders from neighboring islands, including Remba and Mfangano.

The ice is sold in quantities ranging from small portions costing $0.38 to 75-kilogram sacks priced at $5.40. Most buyers use it during transport or fishing expeditions lasting up to four days, Ochieng said.

“The electricity supply here is very unreliable, especially during the rainy season, but one thing we never run out of is sunshine,” he said.

Ochieng said the batteries are usually fully charged by around 9 am on sunny days, allowing the machine to operate directly on solar power while recharging the battery system.

The facility also supplies ice to nearby islands when power outages disrupt their operations, allowing fishermen to preserve their catch when the national grid fails.

Because the Takawiri plant is the only ice-making facility serving the surrounding islands, Ochieng called for more investment in cold-chain infrastructure to support the region’s growing fisheries sector.

Securing the future

A 2025 Kenya Fisheries Service report said the country produces just 161,000 metric tons of fish annually, against demand of 510,000 tons needed to reach the African average per capita consumption of 10 kilograms.

The agency said cage farming is playing an increasingly important role in Kenya’s blue economy, contributing an estimated 76 percent of national aquaculture production in 2024. Lake Victoria alone had 5,975 operational cages, with a combined volume of about 2.05 million cubic meters, managed by 634 farmers.

The momentum comes at a critical time. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has challenged African countries to increase aquatic food production by 67 percent by 2050 to feed the continent’s rapidly growing population.

Commenting on the report’s findings last month, Manuel Barange, FAO assistant director-general and director of its fisheries and aquaculture division, said expanding sustainable aquaculture would be essential to meeting Africa’s future food needs.

Despite the urgency, the UN body said Africa accounts for less than 2.5 percent of global aquaculture production, while China produces more than half of the world’s farmed aquatic animals.

Tom Guda, Kenya’s national chairman of Beach Management Units, warned that continued dependence on dwindling wild stocks is pushing some fishers toward destructive and illegal practices that threaten Lake Victoria’s future.

“If fish stocks decline, communities lose both food and income, making them more vulnerable to harmful fishing practices,” he said during a panel discussion on community co-management at the 11th Our Ocean Conference held in June in Mombasa.

Against that backdrop, experts say the growing use of Chinese technology across Lake Victoria is providing a sustainable way forward, with Global South cooperation helping communities secure livelihoods, strengthen food security and shape their future.

Contact the writers at wangxiaodong@chinadaily.com.cn