Mobile app assists Ugandan stakeholders access  reliable fisheries data in real-time

UGANDA – Ugandan stakeholders have obtained access to mobile application, electronic Catch Assessment Survey (e-CAS), that will enable lake management officials, researchers and policymakers freely access comprehensive information on fisheries data from Lakes Albert and Victoria and enable them to make informed decisions around fisheries management.

With the potential to accommodate an unlimited number of data sets including fisheries surveys, aquaculture, socio-economics and marketing, the app will be an invaluable resource for the sustainable development of fisheries for wealth creation, employment and food security.

Initially, trained data collectors consulted with fishers to update the easy-to-use app with data such as fish catch quantity, type of fishing nets and boats used, and how much money the fishers expect to earn.

“Before the app, we used papers to ask questions to the fishers. It was a tiresome job because it took a lot of time and could take weeks before an official agent would collect the files,” said Ocakacon Muhammed, a trained data collector based at Lake Albert.

According to the system administrator at the National Fisheries Resources Research Institute NAFIRRI, Patrick Bwire, since the system was set up, over 12,000 data records have been documented and consolidated in one place.

Bwire adds that it would previously take two days to physically carry out and look at the census of the boats and the fish landed to estimate the fish stocks.

Further, the previous manual approach cost the government about US$106,340 per year, according to Bwire, but e-CAS has brought the cost down to around US$21,270.

The app was initially developed in 2021 by NaFIRRI in partnership with regional research institutes in Tanzania and Kenya, under the coordination of the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO).

e-CAS is freely accessible through the Google Play Store and the benefits of the technology were immediately recognized by the NutriFish project in Uganda.

NaFIRRI and the Directorate of Fisheries Resources are planning to scale up and roll out e-CAS across all Ugandan lakes.

And with the technology already in place in Tanzania and Uganda as part of the LVFO partnership, it will be easier for other countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo – which shares Lake Albert with Uganda – to invest in the same technology, according to Anthony Basooma, a research scientist at NaFFIRI.

At the end of last year, Ghana also launched a similar mobile application to support fish farming management and marketing,

The fish farm tracker App offered a computerized solution for business and economic management, general record keeping, data collection, administration of production, basic fish health and water quality monitoring, and management of fish farms.

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