A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FISH TRADE IN UGANDA: GENDER PERSPECTIVE

The East African region commonly referred to as the great lakes is richly endowed with many lakes. However, Uganda as a country produces more fish than most of its neighbors in East Africa. Fish is as such traded in Uganda domestically as well as exported to her neighboring countries including Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Many studies have analyzed some aspects of the Ugandan domestic fish trade Jagger (2001), Hyuha et al. (2011) and Gordon et al.(2012), but comparisons of cross border fish trade along Uganda / DRC border and gender perspective has not been done. This study sought to fill the knowledge gap in order to feed into policy.

This study was conducted in Central and Uganda and DR Congo border where cross border trade in fish is active. A total sample size of 141(71males and 70 females) was purposively selected. Descriptive statistics and regression analysis were used to analyze the data

The mean age of respondents was 36 and 37 years for male and females. The males traders had more experienced (13 years) in fish trade than female (9years).  As expected, male traders were more educated than female traders (7, 5 years spent in school, respectively). Male Fish traders registered higher gross margins than females. However, the Benefit/Cost analysis showed that females were getting higher returns on investment than males because of the small volumes involved. Regression analysis showed that contract arrangements, number of times information is received and distance to selling locations significantly affected the profitability of the trade.

The results point to the fact that to facilitate trade, contract arrangement is encouraged, while reducing distances to encourage easy access to market is also important. In addition, information dissemination of information about the trade, for instance through  mobile phones would be an important avenue to  improving returns to fish trade.