Fishing Lake Mweru: A Surprising Tale of Adaptation and Survival

ted December 02, 2007

David Gordon
At first, the tale of Lake Mweru seems all too familiar. Located on the border between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, this important fishing resource has been radically affected by overfishing, environmental degradation and political tumult.

In a celebrated new book by Assistant Professor of History David M. Gordon, however, it becomes a hopeful story of adaptation and economic survival, even as those who fish its waters negotiate ever-shifting concepts of property and governance underscoring its environmental transformation.


Nachituti's Gift: Economy, Society, and Environment in Central Africa (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), charts the course of fishing in this Central African lake from the mid-19th century to the present. The story of the lake, though central, serves moreover as a backdrop for Gordon's analysis of economic and social change as the e mention at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association.


Fish trader with bales of smoked fish in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1998. Photo by David Gordon.
Interestingly, it wasn't a book Gordon intended to write. He originally planned to study how rural elites had fared in the region during periods of political change, but after an initial research trip to the Congo and Zambia in 1997-98, he realized how pivotal the lake was both to "ordinary welfare and extraordinary wealth."

"My food and my food for thought became the fishery," he adds. In field studies with local historianswhich point Europeans introduced new types of property regimes that accorded with European notions of individual and communal tenure.

"The problem with resources in post-colonial Africaordon. "Mainly women."

Today, the lake is home to a thriving population of small fish called Chisense, whose short, prolific reproductive cycle virtually ensures against overfishing and offers increased fishing opportunities for smaller-scale operators.

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"From the perspective of biodiversity, there is definitely a tragedy here," reflects Gordon. "For someone concerned with the welfare of poor women, it's not such a bad story ... It's more a tale of adaptation than environmental collapse. It depends on what you see."

Gordon, who joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2005, is continuing to research and write a second book, which he plans to work on during his junior sabbatical leave in 2008-09.

The book deals with religion and political imagination in the history of south central Africa. "I hope to delineate the common historical processes that make the study of this region a significant sub-field of study within African history," says Gordon.fisheries