The Lake Victoria Marine Spatial Plan in relation to Aquaculture Suitability and Carrying Capacity under the Sustainable Activities in Water Areas (SAWA) project is a state of the art and world class decision-making tool-oriented research and management project focused on the Kenyan portion of Lake Victoria. Using applications such as Geostore and AQUA for data processing and the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), the plan delineates the lake into inshore and offshore aquaculture in an innovative web-based tools and products (https://www.sawa.blue/explore). The inshore cage suitable areas optimally range at a depth of about 6 – 10 m alongside constraints like navigation routes, water hyacinth hot spots and breeding areas. The area recommended for inshore aquaculture in the lake is 291 km2 representing 8% of the lake. The “not suitable” and “less suitable” areas are recommended for accessing the lake for transport, navigation, capture fisheries, tourism, sports and other uses. The recommended inshore aquaculture zones are potential areas for small scale farmers with low capital requirements. The offshore suitable areas that optimally ranges at an optimum depth of about 10 – 50 m for cage culture are alongside constraints like navigation routes, water hyacinth hot spots, and breeding areas. Such installations require firm anchorage to withstand strong currents and could be mainly for capital intensive farms. These sites will be suitable for commercial aquaculture and large-scale farms/firms. It is suggested that the “highly suitable” potential portion of the lake is utilized for cage culture depending on requests from investors after which more room can be sought for “suitable areas” of the lake depending on the existing production carrying capacity. Just like inshore cage farming suitability, the other “not suitable” and “less suitable” areas are recommended for accessing the lake during transport, navigation, capture fisheries, tourism and sports. The carrying capacity of the entire Lake Victoria and with best management practices (BMP) of cage culture is estimated to have a production carrying capacity for riparian counties for cage culture at 275,000 mt p.a.
Keywords: Spatial plan; Aquaculture; frameworks; Lake Victoria; sustainability.