Artisanal Fisheries Socio-Economic Characteristics in Development Planning Strategies

In developing countries, artisanal fisheries occupy a critical position in rural livelihoods. This is because fishing as an activity offers great opportunities for rural communities who have minimal resource endowment. In order to understand the diversity in artisanal fisheries communities’ livelihoods, analysis of socio-economic characteristics is important. This can help in designing appropriate strategies that are informed and knowledge based. In this paper, artisanal fishing community living around Lake Victoria was selected for data collection to enable identification of their socio-economic characteristics. This paper also discusses the impact of selected artisanal fisheries characteristics on livelihoods. Significantly, the study findings show that, the socio-economic features of artisanal fishing households are strongly embedded in their ancestral domain and the preservation of their continuity of culture, values, tradition, system, practices and exploitation of natural resources. Further, these features determine the kind of livelihoods that were observed in the study area. The study concludes that socioeconomic characteristics are important in shaping livelihoods of small-scale fisher folk.