By Patrick Chiriba & Cate Mukami

With a torch in hand, she crouches on the sand picking through a pile of shells she has been collecting for hours.

The thunderous sound of the sea as the waves violently hit the shore, occasionally sends a chill down her spine.

It is in this powerful Indian Ocean that her husband died years back, struggling to eke out a living for his family.

Every night, Mama Margaret, ventures into the sea praying and hoping that the tides would be merciful. The widow, who lives at Kanamai, Kilifi County, wades into the sea at around ten o’clock and comes out around two.

She precariously picks cowrie shells off the reef by torchlight. A good night, she says, yields two kilos.

Buyers pay between Ksh. 40 and Ksh .70 a kilo, with a good night bringing shells worth Ksh. 80 to Ksh. 140.

Payments only come after the shells have been left to rot, washed and dried in the sun, and before a buyer docks a kilo because they are not shiny enough.

Margaret’s terrifying moments come whenever her school-going daughter, joins her in the waters that took her father’s life.

With a pensive look, she says: “There is nothing we get from the government that helps us. If the government were helping us, that girl would not be in the sea with me at night,”

Mama Margaret at the Kanamai beach says at night says a good night yields about two kilos

Her reflective look into empty space, is as deep as the distance between promises made by the national Blue Economy and reality lived by women in Kilifi County. Women, waiting upon benefits yet to come.

Women are everywhere in Kilifi’s fish economy: they dominate trading and processing, make up nearly all the cowrie collectors, and about 80 per cent of one fish-farming group we visited.

They are largely absent from the places where money and decisions concentrate: boats, engines, cold storage, and the grants and trainings that pay for them.

The law gives women a seat. The 2024 Beach Management Unit (BMU) Regulations bar executive committees from having more than two-thirds of one gender, and the Kilifi BMU leaders we spoke to meet or exceed that.

But women are roughly 16 per cent of the members at Kanamai BMU, and the benefits are not following the seats.

Cowrie gleaners, almost all women, are not counted in national fisheries statistics, and the legal status of their trade is unclear.

Freezers, cooler boxes, loans and training reach women through groups, proposals and meetings. Women at Kanamai and Kijangwani said they never heard of them or never received them. Officials say distribution is fair.

Women in freshwater aquaculture, the part of the sector the government’s plan treats as its main growth engine, said promised training never came.

The promise on paper

On 26 February 2026, the government launched the National Blue Economy Strategy 2025 - 2030, aiming to lift annual earnings from about Ksh. 40 billion to Ksh. 350 billion by 2030.

Cabinet Secretary Hassan Joho said Kenya had chosen to treat the blue economy “not as a slogan but as a pillar of our development strategy”

President William Ruto, speaking in Homa Bay in May 2025, described the goal as a “thriving, inclusive, and sustainable blue economy”, and the report of the speech said women and youth would be central to the strategy.

Closing the Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa in June 2026, President Ruto told delegates they had not come “to add our names to a longer list of promises”.

Blue Economy and Fisheries Principal Secretary Betsy Njagi gave the base numbers in a March interview: 168,424 tonnes of fish worth Ksh. 39.6 billion in 2024; about 69,900 capture fishers and 65,452 fish farmers; and 1.2 to 1.5 million people across the value chain.

She described the task as “moving from rhetoric to reality”, naming operational landing sites and cold-chain infrastructure among the tools.

On women specifically, the PS pointed to the Investing in Women in the Blue Economy programme, which targets 1,490 jobs for women.

CS Joho’s predecessor, CS Salim Mvurya, told Parliament in 2024 that the programme runs from February 2022 to November 2026, and that Cabinet had approved a Kenya Fisheries Policy 2023 to mainstream gender equity.

On the coast, a major vehicle has been the World Bank-financed Kenya Marine Fisheries and Socio-Economic Development project (KEMFSED), a Ksh. 10 billion credit approved in 2020.

The legal anchor is the Fisheries Management and Development Act, 2016 (No. 35 of 2016), which sets out to uplift the living standards of fishing communities, encourages users’ participation in management, and lets the Cabinet Secretary make regulations for community-based BMUs.

The question for this investigation was simple: has any of that reached the women who do the work?

The law gives women a seat, then sets conditions to it

BMUs are the local bodies that co-manage landing sites with government. Under the 2024 BMU Regulations, an executive committee of up to 15 must be drawn 30 per cent from boat owners, 30 per cent from crew, 30 per cent from fish traders and 10 per cent from “others”, and no more than two-thirds of it may be of one gender.

• Gilbert Nzai and Bidala Rashid say women are well represented in the BMU structures

Officials we interviewed call this “30 per cent women”; in the text it is a one-third floor.

On that measure, the BMUs we visited comply. Kanamai BMU’s vice-chair, Bi Dala Rashid, said her 13-member committee has five women, or 38 per cent.

Gilbert Nzai, chair of Kuruwitu BMU and of the KAMAMKUKI Joint Co-Management Area (JCMA), said six of about 15 committee members are women, including his deputy and treasurer.

Dishon Murage, technical adviser at Oceans Alive, said some Kilifi BMUs approach 50 per cent.

But a seat on a committee is not the same as a share of the benefits. Bi Dala said Kanamai BMU has 585 members, of whom 92 are women, about 16 per cent.

Murage described the early years of the 30 per cent rule candidly: many women elected to BMU posts were “there to be seen” rather than to decide, a pattern he said is changing but where “we are on the right path” rather than there.

Dishon Murage says income in fisheries follows ownership of boats, engines and gear, and calls it “not an equal playing field”

The Regulations also contain two details that matter for the women we interviewed.

Shell collectors are filed under “others”. The definition of “others” lists net repairers, boat builders, engine repairers, cage and mariculture farmers, processors and shell collectors.

Women who collect cowries therefore compete for roughly one in ten committee seats with every other non-fishing trade.

Leadership has an education gate. Candidates must be literate; secretary and treasurer need at least a secondary certificate, and so does the chair unless nobody qualifies, when a primary certificate will do.

Candidates must also hold a certificate of good conduct and have no arrears of BMU fees.

County fisheries officer Teddy Kingi told us most fishers and fish traders are “class four dropouts” and that few reach Class 8 or Form 4.

Teddy Kingi points out the issue of illiteracy among some members of the fishing community.

The rules apply to everyone, but they filter hardest on exactly the women he describes.

The arithmetic of a night tide

The interviews give enough figures to price the work. Collectors described yields from a quarter-kilo on a daytime tide to about two kilos on a good night, and prices of Ksh. 40 to Ksh. 70 a kilo

These are our calculations from those figures:

According to the Fisheries Management and Development (Marine Fisheries) Regulations, 2024 (Second Schedule), the national annual license for an artisanal fisher is Ksh. 500.

Others quoted other figures: Nzai said collectors pay Ksh. 500 to register with a BMU and Ksh. 200 to renew and described a collector who earns about Ksh. 200 in a day and has paid Ksh. 350 or 500 for a license.

Fish trader Salama Rajab said registration costs Ksh, 850 and renewal Ksh. 550. Bi Dala said fishers pay Ksh. 550.

The statutory Ksh. 500 equals four to six of the best nights above, and Salama’s Ksh. 850 registration six to eleven, both before the buyer’s deductions.

The differences between the figures may reflect BMU fees on top of the statutory license.

“We struggle on because it is the trade we know, but there is nothing in it,” Margaret said.

Counted out

WorldFish research analyst Japhet Tembo, who works on digital tools for small-scale fisheries, said Kenya’s small-scale fisheries supply 80 to 90 per cent of national production and support about 80 per cent of coastal livelihoods.

By the 2022 frame survey, he said, there are around 14,000 fishers and about 350 of them are women: roughly 2.4 per cent, by his calculation.

WorldFish analyst Japhet Tembo estimates women are about 2.4 per cent of Kenya’s counted fishers, and says gleaning goes uncounted

The count of 14,000 is consistent with published work citing the 2022 survey. The earlier 2014 survey counted 167 women among 12,915 fishers, or 1.3 per cent.

A 2024 study notes that Kenyan authorities put fisherwomen at under 2 per cent of fishers, while globally women are about 40 per cent of the small-scale fisheries workforce.

The gap is definitional. A “fisher” in the census is someone with a boat or a line. Women walk the reef.

“Gleaning” is, in Tembo’s phrase, a hidden part of the system: it does not enter BMU data logs or the national catch assessment, so “their data go uncounted in terms of the national statistics” and planners have nothing to plan with.

Tembo said the Fisheries Management and Development Act of 2016 covers small-scale fisheries and gives BMUs the mandate to manage local marine resources.

“The policies are there but the problem is the implementation,” he said.

The legal position of cowrie collection is also unclear. The 2024 Marine Fisheries Regulations allow subsistence fishing by foot, capped at five kilograms of fish a day, but bar subsistence fishers from commercial fishing or fish trade.

Dr Juliet Karisa, a marine scientist at the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI), said existing policy forbids exporting cowrie shells or taking them from marine protected areas, and allows collection only for personal use, not trade.

Dr Juliet Karisa of KMFRI says there's a need for policy review.

“Such policies were made at a time when there was a lot of that resource, and they need review,”

Yet Saumu Mkani told us a license exists and collectors are asked for it, and the BMU Regulations list shell collectors as members.

What a collector’s license actually permits is a question we have not been able to settle.

Where the freezers went

The most consistent complaint from fish traders was about cold storage. Salama Rajab has sold fried fish at Kijangwani for 26 years.

When the catch is big, she said, she cannot buy in bulk because she has nowhere to keep it, so she buys a little, fries it, sells it, and returns the next day.

Salama Rajab says she cannot buy in bulk because she has nowhere to store it

Mwanaisha Hassan, who has traded for six years, said the traders there have no cool boxes or freezers and carry fish in basins.

Salama said they held a meeting where traders asked for freezers and for tents and chairs to hire out. They were told it was fine.

“Until now we have seen nothing. Kuruwitu people got, Mwanamia people got. Here at Kijangwani not one woman has got,” she said.

The officials’ account is different. Kingi said the government, with NGOs, has bought freezers and cooler boxes for women, is building shades, and has put fish depots at Mtwapa, Kuruwitu and Kidongo to cut post-harvest losses.

He said the boxes “are specifically for women”.

Both can be true: support may exist and still not reach Kijangwani. What decides who gets it is the mechanism.

Kingi said funding goes to groups, not individuals, and that groups typically have 15 to 30 members, so women outside a group feel left out.

Bi Dala described the same system from the BMU side: “Kanamai BMU has 13 groups, maybe four won support, and for some programmes you have to write a proposal”.

“Winning,” she said, “depends on your sharpness”.

Kingi himself named illiteracy as a main barrier to accessing funds, citing the difficulty some traders have even obtaining national IDs.

Bi Dala added a second grievance: kit arrives without anyone asking what is needed.

“Nobody asks what size of freezer or net, or what kind of boat. You will just be brought a boat you did not expect,” she said.

Who hears about the meetings

All three collectors said no official had ever called a meeting of shell collectors.

Mama Margaret said that when the sea-going fishers are summoned, the women turn up anyway:

“We go to a meeting that does not concern us, because we have never been called. We are not recognized,” she said.

Saumu said she is a Kanamai BMU member and that after a leg injury left her housebound for a year, she saw no contribution from the BMU, only a few individual visits.

Saumu Mkani says she saw no contribution from the BMU during the year a leg injury kept her at home

Salama, also a BMU member, said she has never been properly told what membership means, and that complaints raised in meetings are met with promises to reply that are never kept.

Bi Dala’s position is that complaints about communication come from non-members. “Members all know,” she noted.

Nzai offered another explanation. “Shell collectors often sit under a tree and never reach the BMU office where notices go, and when he is asked to send five or ten women to a training, jealousy follows.”

Tembo made the structural point: “only those that have information will benefit.”

Landing sites that are not landing sites

The cold stores the women ask for need somewhere to stand.

Bi Dala said Kanamai BMU has no landing site, no office, no access road, and keeps its books at a member’s house.

Water and power utilities, she said, want a title deed before they connect. She said the BMU has asked its MP and local companies for even a container to use as an office.

Murage said that of 104 BMUs on the coast only about seven or eight sites are gazetted, an estimate he said he could not recall exactly, which would leave most BMUs outside a legally defined jurisdiction.

The BMU Regulations give a BMU authority over its landing station. The 2014 frame survey recorded 197 landing sites on the coast.

On 9 October 2026, President Ruto was reported to have told fishermen at the Agriculture & Food Systems Transformation Summit in Nairobi that all 41 landing sites along the coastline have been mapped out and gazetted.

The two accounts differ, and neither matches the 104 BMUs Murage counted.

Natural Justice, which sought the state’s landing-site survey, said the report showed many sites to be dysfunctional or captured by outside interests.

The other shore: women who farm fish

Not every story is one of neglect. Grace Fondo and Kibibi Kadenge farm tilapia in ponds supplied by a government project.

Kadenge said about 80 per cent of their group are women. Both said the income has changed their households: school fees are paid, and some families now eat twice a day instead of once.

Grace Fondo and Kibibi Kadenge and Grace Fondo say income from fish farming has helped pay school fees and put food on the table

Both also said the support ended early. Fondo said the group was shown feed ratios once, when the fingerlings arrived, and was told the feed supplied would expire after two years.

She said she has never had specialised training. One morning she found the fish gasping at the surface; she phoned an officer, who did not answer.

A local member advised opening the water; two hours later the fish had recovered. Kadenge said they were promised teachers who never came, and that the group farms “with our natural wits.”

Fondo said a senior official’s visit was announced, guests including foreigners were invited, and the visit was cancelled that afternoon.

“It is as if we exist and do not exist,” she said. She wants a market, training and loans.

Neither group belongs to a BMU or holds a license, and Fondo said she knows of no policy that applies to them.

Kingi said the department can advise but cannot supply a water source. “We are a department, and funding is the main gap,” he said.

Yet The Star’s report of PS Njagi’s plan describes aquaculture as the main growth engine, with output projected to rise from 168,000 to over 450,000 tonnes.

These women are standing at the centre of that plan, with no extension service in reach.

Children in the water

According to Mama Margaret’s account, her daughter is not the only child. She said school pupils join their mothers after class and at night.

Under Kenyan law, the Constitution of Kenya Article 53(1)(d); and the Children Act 2022, Article 53section 18), a child may not be subjected to hazardous labour or work that interferes with education.

BMU membership begins at 18.

“We don’t encourage kids. It’s not according to the law. They are not supposed to be doing those activities. So, when we encounter such cases, we discourage them, and we take action,” Kingi said.

He added: “Maybe those are just a few selected cases when we don’t have information, but when we get such information, kids are not allowed to be doing those activities, only adults.”

Nzai said BMUs keep guards and that the rule is a prohibition, but that in practice a mother arrives with a child carrying the bucket.

The law and the tide meet at a kitchen table: for Margaret, the child comes because there is no other money for school.

Safety is the other risk. Collectors described the tide coming in unseen in the dark, with fishers whistling a warning from the reef, and two women rescued by boat after staying too long.

Tembo said women who cannot swim and have no vessel or life jackets are exposed.

The BMU Regulations make safety and rescue a BMU duty.

What officials say

The county and BMU leaders reject the idea that women are being left out, and some of the evidence supports them.

Kingi said fisheries policy is working and the catch is recovering. He said women are not excluded and that the programmes are “an equal opportunity” that “depends on your hard work”.

He said at Kuruwitu women who accessed loans now run two fish butcheries.

He further that argued mama karanga are not low earners, since fishers believe traders profit more, and that women’s absence from the sea itself is “not a matter of governance or policy but tradition”.

He said every BMU’s accounts are audited and committees monitor spending.

Nzai said the old taboo about women on boats is fading: women now do coral restoration, two data-collector posts went to women after a competitive vetting, and a woman who beat men for the chair of Kuruwitu’s protected area now sits above him on that area’s decisions.

He said women must themselves decide to go to sea and that BMUs can then find trainers.

Bi Dala said the number of registered shell collectors at Kanamai has risen from 15 or 20 to 67 since she took office.

Murage pointed to Jimbo and Vanga in Kwale, where women began by processing landed fish, organised into groups, bought boats, and now out-earn men.

Dr. Juliet said she has watched women in Lamu go from the basics to winning grants and speaking in Madagascar and France.

But the officials’ own evidence points to the barrier that tradition does not explain.

Murage said income in fisheries tracks investment: catch is shared among boat, engine, gear and crew, and dealers take the biggest mark-up, so people who own the assets get the most.

It is “not an equal playing field”. Women are well placed as traders but cannot buy the boats, engines or freezers, because banks want security and most fishers have none.

So Kingi’s point that mama karanga earn well, and Salama’s that she cannot buy more than she can fry that day, are the same fact seen from two ends: capital and storage decide.

What the women are asking for

The requests are specific. Collectors asked to be recognised and called to meetings, and for a way out of the sea: businesses to start, or a job for their children after completing school.

Fish traders asked for freezers, cool boxes, standard prices from fishers and, if possible, a boat of their own.

Fondo and Kadenge asked for teachers, loans, a market and gloves, aerators or water-treatment help.

Bi Dala asked government to lower license fees, to ask what is needed before delivering it, and to follow up afterwards on whether something donated is used for its intended purpose.

The experts converge on a short list. Tembo wants gleaning to be counted and sex-disaggregate fisheries data.

Dr. Juliet champions for finance, which she called the best empowerment tool.

Murage pointed a review of the Fisheries Management and Development Act, now under way, public funding for BMUs, gazettement of landing sites, and “thinking outside the reef” so the effort goes to boats and skills that can reach unfished waters.

Kingi said there is need for alternative livelihoods to ease pressure on the reef.

The verdict

Is the Blue Economy leaving Kilifi’s women behind? On this evidence, the answer depends on which women and which part of the economy.

Women are not shut out by law. They hold committee seats, form savings groups, run butcheries and farm fish.

But the programmes that carry the Strategy’s promises run through channels that favour the literate, the organised and the already informed: groups, proposals, meetings and gazetted sites.

The women with the least capital, the cowrie gleaners, are not counted, are not clearly licensed, are not called, and are working with their children in the dark.

President Ruto warned that pledges without the means to deliver them cannot match the scale of the problem.

The Strategy’s 2030 target is Ksh 350 billion. Mama Margaret’s is smaller. “I pray that the girl finishes school and gets a job. If she finds work, she will free me too: I will not go into the sea again,” she said.

This publication was produced with support from Mbegu Fund under the SAFIRI Programme, funded by the European Union.