- Lake Malawi accounts for more than 90% of landlocked Malawi’s total fish catch, and a key fishing ground is the water around Mbenje Island.
- The community here has since the 1950s practiced, and enforced, a fisheries management regime that continues to benefit both fishers and local fish stocks.
- Even as fish stocks dwindle and average fish sizes shrink elsewhere across Lake Malawi, around Mbenje Island the fish are bigger and fishers are “assured [of] a good haul.”
- The success of the management scheme is credited to the fact that it’s embedded within the community’s existing power structures, giving it “legitimacy among fishers as it has not been imposed from outside,” according to a researcher.
CHIKOMBE BEACH, Malawi — Dressed in a red T-shirt, a yellow-and-blue wrapper tied from the chest, and flip-flops, Zainab Kassim looks like any of the ordinary people gathered at Chikombe Beach along Lake Malawi. But she’s one of the most powerful people here. She’s the chief detective of this place, appointed by Senior Chief Makanjira, the highly respected traditional leader of this fishing community.
In her role as “Inspector General,” as they call her, Kassim, who is in her late 60s and deaf, uses “special powers” (which the elders refuse to disclose) to sniff out contraband, such as marijuana and beer, that some attempt to smuggle to Mbenje Island, the community’s most important fishing ground.
These items are banned there. In fact, despite being a fierce law enforcer herself, Kassim is also barred by law from the island. It’s part of the community’s fisheries management regime that women are not allowed to set foot on the island.
“This island is the sanctuary of our ancestors,” says Chief Mpiringidzo, one of Senior Chief Makanjira’s lieutenants and leader of the Mbenje Island Management Committee. “They give us fish that sustains our lives. We wouldn’t want to make them angry and make them stop providing for us.”
Drinking beer, smoking marijuana and allowing women on the island — which would impinge upon their dignity by exposing them to sexual advances by fishers and rough living conditions — would enrage the ancestors, Chief Mpiringidzo says.
After all, the gods have shown anger before when women tried to visit the island. A story is told in the community of one such case in the early 2000s when a Japanese fisheries researcher insisted on going to the island, defying warnings from the elders. As her boat approached, a serious illness struck her and the waters turned turbulent. She and her entourage had to return to shore, upon which the lake calmed down and her condition improved, the story goes.
“The spirits have brought afflictions before to those breaching these customs. Observance of these traditions is vital to us as a fishing community,” Chief Mpiringidzo says. (In this area, chiefs are referred to almost exclusively by their titles, which reflect the region they govern; their given names are rarely used, as a sign of respect.)
Built on these Indigenous beliefs, the Mbenje Island fisheries management regime has become a model of effective fish conservation in Malawi amid declining fish stocks elsewhere in the country. For seven decades, this community in Salima district in central Malawi has relied on reverence of ancestral spirits and compliance with traditionally set social values to ensure sustainable fisheries resources around the island.
Surveys by both the fisheries department and local and international researchers as well as accounts from fishers themselves confirm abundant and healthy fish around the island, which they attribute to the local management regime.
Maxon Ngochera, the fisheries department’s senior deputy director, says Mbenje’s system has influenced the department’s fisheries sector governance.
“The commitment that this community has shown and provided over time gave the department an impetus to adopt a community-based fisheries management,” Ngochera says.
The lake
It’s 10 a.m. on a Tuesday in August at Chikombe Beach. Vendors bargain for fish; artisans fix nets spread out on the sand; women prepare food for sale in their grass-thatched stalls; and fishers cure fish on drying racks and in smoking kilns.
Occasionally, pickup trucks come ferrying barrels of fuel for boats, packages of assorted groceries and foodstuffs for sale, and firewood for cooking and smoking fish — all destined for the island. As the vehicles depart, some carry with them loads of fish to take to markets.
In landlocked Malawi, population 20 million, the fisheries and aquaculture sector is a major source of employment. It provided more than 150,000 direct jobs in 2018, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and more that 1.6 million jobs further up the supply chain, according to a 2021 government report.
Lake Malawi is the hub of this industry. The largest of Malawi’s four main fishing grounds, the lake stretches 587 kilometers (365 miles) from north to south, more than half the length of the country, and 84 km (52 mi) at its widest point. It’s home to an estimated 1,000 fish species, according to UNESCO. Annually, it yields more than 90% of the national fish catch, which amounted to nearly 200,000 metric tons in 2017, FAO figures show.
However, like the country’s other fishing bodies, Lake Malawi’s fish stocks are dwindling as a result of overfishing due to a rising human population, limited alternative sources of livelihood, climate change, and habitat degradation, according to the FAO and the government.
This is where Mbenje Island, with its stable fish stocks, stands out.
The island
Around 3 p.m. that sunny Tuesday, the island is serene. Fishers smoke fish and spread them on rocks to dry; some sleep in their grass shelters; others play pool on a table someone ferried out to the island. Some cool off in the lake, in an area designated for bathing.
“This is our world,” chuckles Amad Saidi, one of the fishers. “It’s a self-sufficient town. Free and peaceful. No fights, no thefts, no gambling, no killing of snakes or birds. Each one of us here understands the importance of these values.”
Located 10 km (6mi) from the shore, the predominantly rocky Mbenje Island is one of a cluster of six islands. Except for during the fishing season, no one lives here.
It’s under the jurisdiction of Makanjira chieftaincy, which created a fisheries management system to safeguard fish stocks from potential decline, according to Rabson Chipangula, secretary of the Chikombe Beach subcommittee of the Mbenje Island Management Committee. In the early 1950s, two migrant commercial fishers arrived in the area and asked to settle on the island to begin fishing. The then-Senior Chief Makanjira — current Senior Chief Makanjira’s grandfather — sensed this would open the door to more fishers and lead to dwindling fish if it went unmanaged.
His earliest intervention was to introduce a four-month fishing ban running from Dec. 1 to March 31, encompassing local fishes’ breeding season. In government-managed areas, fishing is prohibited only for two months, from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31.
“It was also because the chief cared about fishers’ safety,” Chipangula says. “As rainy season starts in December, these islands experience fierce lightning and thunderstorms.”
In the culture of this community, lightning is also a sign of anger from the ancestors, represented by two chiefs who were buried on the islands in 1922. The Makanjira chieftaincy wove customary beliefs and community-made rules into a formidable system that governs fisheries management around the island.
Days before the fishing season opens, Senior Chief Makanjira, as emissary of the ancestors, leads an all-male contingent of other chiefs and elders to the island to offer a goat sacrifice and local brew as an expression of gratitude to the ancestors for allowing fish to breed and to ask them to look after fishers.
On the opening day, usually the first Saturday of April, Senior Chief Makanjira leads a ceremony of traditional dances and other cultural activities on Chikombe Beach. At the event, also attended by government officials, he reads out the regulations before releasing fishers to the island.
These fishers are registered in advance and each one submits their nets to the Mbenje Island Management Committee to inspect its mesh size. Violation of the regulations carries penalties ranging from a fine of 10 goats or confiscation of fishing gear, to banishment from the island for between two and five years.
Chief Mpiringidzo says the purpose of this regulatory system is to ensure peace prevails, as the spirits require of the people.
“It’s our way to create social harmony on the island, to bring a kind of Edenic tranquility that assures us of the provisions of the abundance of nature. We believe that if we anger our ancestral spirits through misbehavior, they won’t provide us with fish,” he says.
Kaluma Matola, a fisher, says fishers don’t often breach the regulations. “We benefit a lot from fishing on the island,” he says. “So, you look at how much you will lose if you are banned from fishing for two years.
“These customs have worked for 70 years,” he adds. “We see many fishers coming from elsewhere because there’s no fish in their areas. That strengthens our belief in the methods.”
In 2023, researchers at Strathclyde University in Scotland and Mzuzu University in Malawi collaborated on the Lessons from Lake Malawi project to investigate the history of fisheries management in the lake. David Wilson, the project’s leader, says the regulations at Mbenje have endured because they’re embedded within the community’s existing power structures.
“This provides the regime with legitimacy among fishers as it has not been imposed from outside and is not removed from local realities,” Wilson writes in an email. “The observed long-term successes at Mbenje Island have then reinforced the legitimacy and efficacy of the rules amongst participants.”
As a result, villagers have developed a strong and proud attachment to the system, he says.
“This long-term success has only been possible through strong leadership, strict and sustained enforcement and effective communication,” Wilson says.
That these methods have a positive impact on the fish stocks is also proven. The Lessons from Lake Malawi research found that Mbenje Island’s Copadichromis virginalis, a cichlid fish called utaka locally, the second-most-fished species in the lake and the main one at the island, is bigger and healthier than fish in government-managed waters.
Hudson Tseka, a fisher from Likoma Island in the north of the lake, says he’s been going to Mbenje Island over the past five years and is always satisfied with the catch.
“Unlike in other fishing grounds, here every time you cast your net, you are assured you will have a good haul,” Tseka says. “That’s why we fishers from other areas look forward to coming here.”
Annual surveys by the fisheries department have also found abundant fish around the island compared with other parts of the lake. “We also conduct surveys in some of the major markets of the country and evidence is that most of the fish found in the markets comes from the island,” says Ngochera, the fisheries department official.
Elias Chirwa, a local fisheries scientist with the Lessons from Lake Malawi project, offers a scientific explanation for the high fish stocks: A kind of virtuous cycle begins with the prolonged breeding-season closure and strict adherence to rules, like those governing net mesh size, resulting in more fish growing to larger sizes at the island. And larger fish are more fertile than smaller ones. “The former lay more eggs and produce more offspring that culminate in more fish,” Chirwa says. “A larger female fish has a larger body cavity that allows the development of larger ovaries with more eggs in them.”
Can success be replicated?
The Mbenje system started in 1952, but it wasn’t until 1996 that the government started recognizing it, by appointing Senior Chief Makanjira (who had yet to add the “senior” to his title) as chair of the country’s small-scale fishers’ association. In 2001, the government adopted Mbenje’s community methods in its national fisheries policy. In 2022, it recognized the current Senior Chief Makanjira as champion of small-scale fisheries in Malawi.
According to Ngochera, Mbenje’s system demonstrates how a bottom-up approach can support the department in fisheries management.
“We face so many challenges ranging from human capacity and financial resources in managing aquatic resources from central level, and communities can help plug the gaps,” he says. “We think that if communities are empowered to manage their own resources, it gives them a sense of ownership and the benefits can be enjoyed over longer periods.”
Ngochera says the department will make sure it doesn’t interfere with the Mbenje system so that it remains “as traditional as possible.”
He says the government’s adoption of Mbenje’s fisheries co-management system, where it now works together with communities to enforce fishing regulations, is paying off. For example, last year, the department and the Oceanographic Institute of Mozambique conducted a 32-day survey to assess fish stocks in the lake. The survey found that the highly prized chambo fish (Oreochromis squamipinnis, O. lidole and O. karongae), listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List due to overfishing, is recovering.
“It is our wish to continue working with [Senior] Chief Makanjira and his committees through participating in their traditional functions and sending other fisheries management groups from various areas on a study tour,” Ngochera says.
Mbenje’s regime highlights the role of Indigenous knowledge in fisheries management in the context of “modern” science, Wilson says. Scientific analysis offers insights that can prove vital in fisheries conservation, he says, “But this needs to be partnered with and co-exist on an equal footing with the deep place-based knowledge, practices, and observations of fishers.”
But it won’t be easy to repeat Mbenje’s success elsewhere, Wilson says: Mbenje’s practices have succeeded because of their entrenchment in local structures and the community’s respect for the leadership of Senior Chief Makanjira (both the position and its present occupant) and the Mbenje Island Management Committee.
“We need to be careful not to simply try to replicate the specific rules, regulations, and structures at Mbenje in other parts of the lake, as this would really be a technical fix and would ignore diverse and distinctive cultural, environmental, political, and social contexts throughout lake fishing communities,” Wilson says.
Banner image : A boat arrives at Chikombe Beach with a haul of fish from Mbenje Island. Image by Charles Mpaka for Mongabay.
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