Migingo Island

A rock that became a town

Migingo is a rocky islet in the Kenyan corner of Lake Victoria. It is about 2,000 m² in all, less than half a football pitch.^[3][2] According to an ISS researcher, it was little more than a rock sticking out of the water until the lake level began to fall in the early 1990s.^[1]

Fishermen began using it as a base around 2001. It sits beside some of the lake’s richest deep-water fishing, and the Nile perch caught there sell to Europe and Asia.^[3][2] Within a few years the island was covered in corrugated-iron shacks, bars, boarding houses and a tiny port.^[6][4] The Independent counted about 500 people in 2009, some 80 percent of them Kenyan.^[6] The Ugandan police put the figure at more than 500 in 2019.^[2]

A boat from the Kenyan shore takes about two hours. Reaching Jinja in Uganda takes 18, which is one reason Kenyans say the island is theirs.^[2]

A line from 1926

The boundary in the lake comes from a British order of 1 February 1926, made when both countries were British territories. It describes the line hopping north from island to island, starting from the westernmost point of Pyramid Island.^[5] Both countries inherited that line at independence, and the order’s coordinates appear in their constitutions.^[1][3]

The islands are small and close together, and the names have not always been used the same way. Ugingo lies about 200 m east of Migingo, and a Pyramid Island lies 2 km south. Ugandan surveyors say Ugingo is the real Pyramid Island of 1926, because of its pyramid shape. That reading would put Migingo in Uganda by a few metres.^[3]

“Commencing in the waters of Lake Victoria on a parallel 1° south latitude, at a point due south of the westernmost point of Pyramid Island; thence the boundary follows a straight line due north to that point…”^[5]

Police, permits and flags

Around 2004 Uganda posted armed police and marines on the island and raised its flag. Their job was to protect fishermen from pirates and to tax them.^[1][2] Kenyan fishermen soon complained of harassment and of being accused of fishing in Ugandan waters.^[1]

In early 2009 Uganda told Kenyans on the island to buy special permits.^[1] A Kenyan district commissioner landed with a dozen police, took down the Ugandan flag and raised Kenya’s. Uganda sent in about 60 marines within a day.^[6] In May 2009 Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni said the island was in Kenya but the water around it was Uganda’s. In Nairobi, angry protesters pulled up the railway line to Uganda, and his spokesman said the remarks had been misunderstood.^[7]

The two countries began a joint survey on 2 June 2009 to mark the lake boundary. The teams fell out over method, and the Ugandan team went home. Working alone, Kenyan surveyors found Migingo about 510 m east of the border, on Kenya’s side. That finding was never officially announced.^[1]

Sharing the rock

Kenya and Uganda set up joint teams to settle the border from the 1920s maps, one of them in 2016, but nothing has come of them.^[2][4] In the meantime the two countries run the island together. Uganda has a police station on Migingo, and Kenya’s marine police are based on neighbouring Usingo Island.^[4]

Flags remain touchy. In September 2018 Kenyan police tried to raise their flag on Migingo, where until then only Uganda’s had flown, and a Ugandan policeman said the two sides then decided no flag would be hoisted.^[4] Local Kenyan politicians have asked Nairobi to take the case to the International Court of Justice.^[2][4]

In December 2025 Kenya’s President William Ruto said the island “is part of Kenya” and promised to use diplomatic and other lawful means to stop its fishermen being harassed. The two governments were also negotiating an agreement on sharing cross-border resources, including the lake’s fisheries.^[8]