Hafitha Issa and Flavia Nassaka, November 2021

Wetlands play a crucial role in purifying the water in the lake and run-off by filtering it. But most of those surrounding Lake Victoria — especially on the Uganda side, have been opened up for farming and settlements.

As East Africa joins the rest of the world for the 26th Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, environmentalists urge delegates to find solutions to the plastic waste crisis along with rivers and lakes.

While some have noted that Lake Victoria is dying “from the bottom” due to plastics, an activist from the National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE), Sostra Namanya, fears that we may end up with more plastics than fish in Victoria.

As the Lake chocks with visible plastics in the form of soft drink bottles, the extent of microplastics is yet to be investigated.

While some plastics have been collected by young people foraging the wetlands to have them recycled, a vast chunk remains uncollected. So can recycling end plastic pollution on Lake Victoria Hafitha Issa and Flavia Nassaka seek answers from various people, including plastic pollution experts?

Listen to the complete report by Hafitha Issa and Flavia Nassaka by clicking on the audio player above.

This story was first published by Uganda Radio Network HERE on 16th October 2021. 

Hafitha Issa and Flavia Nassaka produced this InfoNile / WanaData story with support from JRS Biodiversity Foundation and Code for Africa as part of the WaterCommons initiative and the Code for All Exchange Program, funded by the National Democratic Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy.