Central to the regional integration and development of the East African Community, the Lake Victoria Basin supports a population of 40 million people. The majority of this population depends on the basin for their livelihood, mainly through farming and fishing. Tourism, hydropower generation and transboundary conservation are other big parts of the basin’s economic and development opportunities.

The 194,000 square kilometre basin comprises one of the world’s greatest complexes of lakes, wetlands and rivers. Lake Victoria itself, with a surface area of 68,000 square kilometres, is the largest freshwater lake in Africa. The lake is bordered by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, with Rwanda and Burundi also being within the basin. These countries are some of the member states of the East African Community which together with the Lake Victoria Basin Commission, coordinates the management of the basin. The Lake Victoria Basin Commission is a specialized institution of the East African Community which coordinates activities in the Lake Victoria Basin with the aim of ensuring a sustainable and coordinated development as well as poverty eradication.

“The lake basin plays major ecological, social and economic roles in the East African Community”, says Ally Said Matano, Executive Secretary of the Lake Victoria Basin Commission. “It is the main source of water for domestic, industrial, and hydropower generation. It is a climate regulator, a reservoir of biodiversity and a medium for transport.”

However, the ability of people to make a living in the basin is compromised by environmental degradation, including soil erosion and eutrophication. Much of the degradation is due to human activities such as over-fishing and introduction of invasive species, such as water hyacinth which affects navigation and fishing activities on the lake.

The introduction of the Nile Perch into Lake Victoria has resulted in a successful commercial fishing industry in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, the three countries that share the Lake’s shoreline. However, the Nile Perch is also blamed for causing the demise of close to 200 local fish species in the lake.

Another issue covered in the atlas is the effect of pollution on the wetland system around Murchison Bay which has been contaminated by wastewater, solid waste and industrial effluent from the Kampala and Entebbe metropolitan areas. Due to large scale draining for settlement and farmland, the wetland system’s efficiency to treat the wastewater has been reduced resulting in poor quality water being discharged into Lake Victoria.

The Yala wetland system, situated in Kenya’s part of the basin, is home to a number of threatened species including the sitatunga antelope which can only be found in a few habitats in the country. Some rare fish species also exist in the Yala wetland system. Between 1973 and 2015, large parts of the wetland were converted into crop farming threatening the entire system.

The annual migration of wildebeest and other animals, up to two million individuals, partly takes place in the basin. Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park and Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya are famous for this event and attract a large number of tourists. More frequent and extreme annual droughts and floods in combination with extensive land-use change threaten the wildebeest migration and the basin’s tourism industry.