Africa regional aquaculture review

Aquaculture seems to fit naturally within African farming systems. The Region has under-utilised resources of land and water, available labour and a high demand for fish. This propitious combination of ingredients would seem to form a recipe for success. Indeed, over the past five decades developmentalists have had a love-hate relationship with aquaculture, alternatively embracing it as the cure-all for chronic malnutrition and poverty and chastising it for failing to live up to its expectations. In part, this on-off approach to aquaculture development has itself contributed to the modest results obtained to date. Although significant human and financial resources have been deployed to encourage the adoption of aquaculture technologies, individual yield is low and the Region as a whole is a notable under-producer. This is not to say that past efforts have all been in vain. Aquaculture is now an acknowledged production system with which most farmers are at least superficially familiar. Small-scale integrated fishponds are now common in some parts of Cameroon, Central African Republic, Kenya, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo (Brazzaville), Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique and Liberia - to name a few. The fact that farmers continue to maintain thf'se ponds, albeit often at a very crude level and frequently with little or no government support, is testimony to the fact that the ponds do play an important part in the farmer's overall farming system. Commercial large-scale fish farming is also now a reality in Africa. There are profit making commercial tilapia farms in Zimbabwe and Zambia, HeterotislClarias farms in Nigeria and Crysichthys farms in Cote d'Ivoire. There is also growing interest among entrepreneurs to expand this production to supply domestic urban and overseas markets: Once again the pendulum seems to be swinging in favour of aquaculture. Governments, investors, farmers and developmentalists are viewing aquaculture in a favourable light as its potential contributions to food security, improved resource use and income generations are resurrected