Ruto promises to protect fishermen from deaths at Lake Victoria

President William Ruto will launch a rescue centre targeting fishermen in Lake Victoria on Friday to reduce their annual mortality rate caused by accidents in the water body.

"As you are aware, we lose close to 5,000 people in Lake Victoria every year because of the kind of gears they are using, the boats they are using, the capsizing that takes place and so, tomorrow as the East Africa Region, we are going to be launching a rescue centre that will have all the necessary facilities, including further down the road a chopper that can be used to rescue people in Lake Victoria," he said during a Town Hall meeting in Kisumu on Thursday.

President Ruto expressed optimism that more people will be drawn to the sector if the government makes fishing safe.

"There are other interventions we are taking as a government to make sure that as we focus on how to unlock the potential in fishing. We are building the necessary infrastructure... It (fishing) is important not just for our economy but also for our food security," he explained, adding that the government's move to ban fish exports was part of the efforts geared towards arriving at that goal.

He noted that the overall plan is to increase returns from the Blue Economy from its current Sh2 billion annual contributions to the GDP to about Sh100 billion.

The freshwater lake ranks as the largest in Africa and contains a variety of fish species including the Nile Perch and Tilapia.

The Lake, however, suffers from a myriad of challenges: overfishing, invasive species, pollution, climate change, and lack of regulation that pose a huge risk to its sustainability and the livelihood of local communities.

The President said he will at the same time be launching the Kenya Marine School on Friday which will cater to professionals in the sector including coxswains.