A deafening silence envelops Kabaganja Island, Buvuma District, on Lake Victoria. The rickety canoes that crisscrossed the choppy waters across Lake Victoria drift idle, their nets no longer part of the shoreline’s rhythm.
For years, this fishing community has depended on silverfish—locally known as ‘mukene’—as a source of food and livelihood for a community living in abject poverty. Today, that lifeline has been abruptly severed.
The suspension has left residents stranded and their livelihoods in uncertainty. The crackdown is tied to the use of prohibited fishing nets—long blamed for depleting fish stocks—but the enforcement has come at a high human cost.
In February 2024, the state minister for fisheries, Hellen Adoa, banned the use of the hurry-up method, popularly used for trapping silverfish, on the basis that it was affecting the young nile perch fish species. The minister advised that the community ought to use the scoop-net fishing method.
“I hereby instruct the fisheries enforcement agencies and community leaders that anybody caught using the hurry-up should be prosecuted. Concerned fishers should therefore desist from the use of this method for fishing mukene [silverfish] in all our water bodies.”
It is not clear yet which official or unit of the army has issued the latest ban.
When we visited Kabaganja Island in April 2026, residents spoke of desperation and confusion.
“Because this mukene has helped the country at large,” says Jessica Oyenbo, her voice steady but strained. “Even grassroots women in the villages depend on it. They trade in silverfish, earn income, pay school fees, and feed their families.”
Now, that fragile economic chain has snapped.
In many homes, hunger has replaced routine. Oyenbo, a grandmother caring for children on life-saving treatment, described the impossible choices she faces: “Some of my grandchildren are on ARVs [antiretroviral drugs]. There is no food for them. Our children are at home—they are supposed to go back to school, but they have not even reported.”
The fishing communities across the islands have a high HIV prevalence rate ranging from 22 per cent to 37 per cent, which significantly exceeds the general population’s prevalence of 7.3 per cent.
Young people aged 13 to 24, particularly young females, are disproportionately affected.
Other landing sites, including Nangoma and Kiyindi, which were previously teeming with activity, have also been affected by the ban.
“We have not been working,” says Teopista Komakech. “Some of us took loans. They are demanding their money, and we have defaulted. Others have run away. Others have been killed.”
She further reveals: “We have not received official communication from the army or government. We don’t even know who ordered the ban. Ugandan fishermen are crying—and most of those engaged in this business are women.”
The Kavenyanja community, largely consisting of women in Bussi Islands, Wakiso district, was recently raided by the UPDF, which confiscated their boats.
Along the shores, the visual evidence of collapse is stark: wooden boats sit idle, their purpose suspended, while rats gnaw through abandoned nets. What remains is a community caught between a fishing enforcement ban and economic survival. It is not clear yet when the ban will be suspended.
In March 2026, the UPDF 155th battalion impounded a boat carrying more than ten tonnes of immature fish during a dawn raid at Lujaabwa landing site, Kalangala district.