The myth of Kenyans’ sudden love for fish and cooked-up data

As a student of mathematics during my university days, I was always fascinated by the elegance of numbers and mathematical expressions in proofs for classical theorems.

Now as an experimental scientist, I interrogate, with the same fascination and curiosity, the numbers (data) that I generate, not only with respect to expected trends, but to tease out any “quacks” beyond the initial experimental hypotheses.

So when recently, Magaga Alot, in a commentary published in the Daily Nation of August 8, admonished us for being overly critical of the Chinese instead of taking care of Lake Victoria and asserted that we have an 800,000-tonne worth of fish shortage per year, it immediately struck me as a fishy quack (pun intended!).

This is the same number Fisheries Principal Secretary Japhet Michemi Ntiba has been bandying around to justify importation fish imports from China.

Mr Ntiba asserts that our demand for fish is one million tonnes a year while our capacity is only 200,000 tonnes. But is it really true that our annual demand is 1 million tonnes (a billion kilogrammes) of fish? Well, let us crunch the numbers.

For a population of 50 million, Mr Ntiba means to say that, on average, our current demand is 20 kilos of fish a person a year. The natural reaction for most of us would be, “Wow! I didn’t know we had that much appetite for fish!” and move on with our lives.

This is precisely how corruption mandarins expect us to respond. This data from Mr Ntiba, and its indiscriminate regurgitation by people like Mr Alot—that our annual demand is 20 kilos of fish per person—is as hocus pocus a claim as there ever was. Here is my take on why it does not add up.

SELF-INCRIMINATING MANNER

First, in a rather self-incriminating manner, the same Mr Ntiba is quoted in an October 16, 2012 online report in the Nation Media Group’s Business Daily titled, “Kenyans not eating enough fish to sustain farming”, as saying:

“Despite Sh5.7 billion State investment in development of aquaculture in the last three years, annual fish consumption levels in the country remains low at 3.7 kilogrammes per person.

"We want to raise per capita fish consumption to at least 10 kilogrammes per person to ensure farmers have a market for their fish”.

That was just four years ago.

Now Mr Ntiba wants us to believe that while we Kenyans stubbornly clung to our peculiar, low fish-eating habits for decades, including for the three years the government invested billions in aquaculture, we suddenly and rather magically increased our desire for fish to some 20 kilogrammes per person in a mere four years?

No, Mr Ntiba, go tweet that to the birds of the deep seas!

Second, most of the data available online from reputable sources such as journal publications and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation suggest that Kenyans consume only five to six kilos of fish a person a year at best, loosely translating into 250,000 to 300,000 metric tonnes of fish a year.

So, why the huge disparity from the one million tonnes that is being touted?

The only way this would add up is if, one, a natural disaster wiped out the preferred, cheaper sources of protein; two, a sudden switch in cultural preferences for fish, keeping in mind that regardless of the level of education or social status, most of it is consumed by a handful of communities and only sparingly by the rest; three, a dramatic reduction in fish prices; four, our population sharply grew by a factor of seven without a corresponding increase in fish demand; or, five, these numbers are simply made up.

Why on earth would anyone want to cook up fish consumption numbers, you ask? Well, a simplistic hypothesis is that this will create an artificial shortage, thus spiking fish prices, thus declaring a shortfall that would offer legal cover to import cheap fish from China and sell it at a profit locally.

Add to this the fact that most of the fish is harvested in the western and coastal regions, historically opposition strongholds, and you will see why this could be construed as punishment through calculated sabotage.

By no means am I trying to foment conspiracy theories, but either someone is playing hocus pocus with the fish numbers or we should stop importing fish based on flawed data. 

Dr Mark Ondari is a senior research chemist in Midland, Michigan, in the US; [email protected].