Fish Farming

Fish represents an important part of animal protein availability in sub-Saharan African countries… But the biomass of “natural” fish could decrease by up to 25% by the end of the century in the worst-case climate scenario. Fish farming can increase the availability of local and accessible protein.

The issues

In most sub-Saharan African countries, where the availability of animal proteins is low, fish represents a significant part of this availability. In a difficult context, marked on the one hand by climate change and the decline or loss of agricultural and livestock production, and on the other hand by an unprecedented demographic boom (doubling of the sub-Saharan population by 2050), achieving food security is a major challenge. As increasing the agricultural area and/or importing food products are neither desirable nor sustainable options, agroecological intensification of production is essential. For fish farming, this agro-ecological intensification is based on simple and inexpensive production techniques in artificial ponds or natural ponds, using locally available species, materials and feed, implemented by individual fish farmers or groups. These fish farms have the dual advantage of increasing the availability of local and accessible animal proteins and reducing vulnerability to climate change by diversifying activities and income in rural areas.

Our services

We carry out vulnerability analyses of rural territories to climate change and can thus identify the impacts that these climate changes have on fisheries resources and the measures to deal with them, but also identify the possibility of promoting fish farming to help populations adapt to these climate changes (diversification of income and food resources, in a context of decline or even loss of agropastoral production). We can study alternative options for fish farming (technical feasibility, economic profitability, social acceptability) and formulate recommendations in the context of setting up or evaluating integrated rural development projects. Finally, we work to strengthen the capacities of fish farmers and their organisations, who are in the front line to meet the above challenges.