Migingo Island, in Lake Victoria, is a piece of rock crammed with corrugated metal shelters, home to hundreds of fishermen from across east Africa.
Migingo Island is less than 2,000 square metres, and according to Ugandan police, more than 500 people ilive there, making it the smallest inhabited island on the continent.
It may be small, with its tiny port, few bars, and an open-air casino, but Kenya and Uganda have been arguing over it for a decade.
“They haven’t decided who owns this island,” says Ugandan fisherman Eddison Ouma. “It’s no-man’s land.”
Migingo was nothing more than just a rock protruding out of the water before the lake began receding in the early 1990s, according to senior researcher Emmanuel Kisiangani, who works at the Pretoria office of the Institute for Security Studies.
Fish catches have declined immensely over the years, due to overfishing around Lake Victoria and an invasion of water hyacinth plants that blocked transport to access ports.
Migingo’s strategic interest grew in the early 2000s as fish became increasingly scarce along the shores of Africa’s largest Lake, Lake Victoria.
In 2004, when the island was still barely inhabited, Uganda started to send armed police to Migingo to tax fishermen and offer protection against pirates.
Kenyan fishermen started complaining that they were being subjected to harassment by Ugandan forces, for reasons that included illegal fishing in Ugandan waters. In response to this, the Kenyan government deployed marines to Migingo – a move that brought the two nations head to head.
Despite tensions regarding land ownership, fishing binds the community together. Though a few enjoy exacerbating tensions, many travelled to the island only to make a living and live in peace with one another.
Kenyan fishermen and local politicians have called for the government to seek help from the UN’s top court to resolve this matter.
Kenya and Uganda have since created a joint commission, as human settlement began to swell on the rocky island, to determine who owns the island, using maps from before independence.
As of yet, nothing has come of the committee, so as they wait for the question to be settled, the island is co-managed by the forces of the two countries.
Tensions occasionally flare up with some local fishermen calling it Africa’s “smallest war”.
Thanks to exports to the European Union and a growing demand for the Nile perch in Asia, the large fish has become an even bigger multimillion-dollar export.
According to fisherman Kennedy Ochieng, prices of Nile perch have increased by 50 percent in the last half decade, with large good quality fish bringing in an excess of $300 a kilogramme in international markets.
