Growth without Capital: A Renascent Fishery in Zambia and Katanga, 1960s to Recent Times

Africa's inland fisheries play an increasingly important role in the development of economic opportunities and the provision of food for the continent's poorest communities. Despite their remarkable economic, social and nutritional importance, there have been few attempts to theorise their distinctive political economies and their location within regional economies. The recent history of one of south central Africa's most important commercial inland fisheries, Mweru-Luapula, located on the border of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), demonstrates that periods of increased economic productivity and growth during the last 40 years have occurred without large-scale and capital-intensive investments. Medium- to small-scale entrepreneurs with little prospect of salaried employment, many of them migrants from collapsing urban economies or other rural sectors, have been best able to exploit opportunities in the fishery. They joined rural women, who, increasingly deprived of adequate farmlands, became the processors and traders of fish. Together, they have created a new commercial fishing sector. This pattern of investment and rural–urban linkages has become typical of many of southern and central African fisheries in the hinterland of collapsing urban sectors.