The fishing industry in Zambia benefits over 1 million people both directly and indirectly, and monitoring of fish stocks and players involved in the actual fishing remains a great priority. In light of the high costs surrounding critical, but basic fisheries data collection on the part of the Department of Fisheries, consideration had to be given to assess whether data collected by Fishing Village Management Committees dotted along the shoreline of Lake Kariba and shared or discussed at scheduled quarterly meetings, was reliable and could therefore be used in planning or policy decisions.
The village committees hold regular meetings, receive new fishers and fish traders joining their villages and report changes in fisher and boat numbers by type and challenges. The secretariat is formed by the Department of Fisheries at the district level in a given fishery. Lakewide frame surveys are conducted once every five years by the Department. Mean values of the datasets from two strata were subjected to a student t-test in order to ascertain deviation and reliability.
It was determined that data collected by village committees was reliable and could be used with confidence for planning departmental teams.
