The Great Lakes of Africa help to sustain the economies of several East African nations. Changes in the condition of these lakes is of great concern. The objective of this research was to examine long-term variations of precipitation in the Great Lakes region. Rainfall over the catchment was assessed for Lakes Albert, Edward, Kivu, Malawi, Tanganyika, Turkana, and Victoria, using gauge data. In most cases over 100 years of record are available. Assessments were also made for the region as a whole. TRMM satellite estimates of precipitation were also used to examine the years since 1998.

The hydrology of Lake Victoria is, to a large extent, a function of the balance between rainfall on and evaporation from the lake surface. Historical climate variability has resulted in significant fluctuations in the water level in the lake. Climate models predict changes to the balance between precipitation and evaporation over the coming decades, with potentially serious impacts on the lakes water balance. These impacts have implications for the approximately 30 million people living around the lake, as well as further downstream in the Nile River basin.

Hydrological regimes, including inter- and intra-annual water level fluctuations, are key drivers of productivity and structure in freshwater ecosystems in Africa, where inland fisheries are a vital source of income and protein. Using a synthesis of seventeen standardized food web models of thirteen African lakes and reservoirs, this study explored the relationship between inter- and intra-annual water level fluctuations and sixteen ecological attributes associated with ecosystem configuration, productivity and maturity.

This research project analyzes gender-based violence in cross-border fish trade in the GLR using a human rights perspective. A human rights perspective provides an understanding of the socio-economic conditions facing women fishers in the GLR. Expanding on established research on fishing rights of marginalized people, this analysis highlights human rights issues that have been less documented: gender-based cross-border violence and threats to personal security in the GLR.

Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing has been reported in many publications;_this_research project_provides an overview of the extent of IUU fishing on the African Great Lakes. Stock has been taken of fisheries regulations and legislations in the riparian countries to understand the diversity of the interpretation of illegal fishing operations. A summary has been presented of the regulations governing the target species of the different fisheries.

The three largest lakes of the African Great Lakes system, Victoria, Tanganyika and Malawi, have distinctive fisheries and histories of fisheries management. All three provide essential and high quality food to their riparian populations and a range of other ecosystem services. Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika have highly commercialised and lake-wide, open-water fisheries. In Lake Malawi the commercial fishery is largely confined to the southern end of the lake, mainly exploiting demersal fish. Artisanal and low-level subsistence fisheries occur throughout all three lakes.

Lake Victoria and its basin are comprised of enormous areas of permanent and seasonal small water bodies that have been singled out as important faunal reservoirs for the endangered and threatened native species of Lake Victoria. Two tilapiine fish Oreochromis esculentus and O. variabilis are endemic and were the most commercial species in the lake fishery in early 1900s. Pressure on the fisheries and introduction of new fish species caused a severe decline of these species from the lake.

Lake Victoria has one of the highest endemic fish species-area-relationships of any freshwater bodies in the world. More than 90% of this diversity is composed of haplochromine cichlids that have undergone an evolutionary radiation in the region into more than 700 endemic species in the past 100,000 years. These species belong to more than 20 different major ecological guilds from large benthic and small pelagic herbivores at one end of the consumer food web to inshore and pelagic fish predators at the other end.