Fish farming or aquaculture is the fastest growing food industry in the world, producing half of global fish production. In Africa, aquaculture is crucial to both the continent’s economic growth and meeting food and nutrition security. Though the continent is blessed with abundant natural resources, major challenges to aquaculture development include poor quality fish seed supply, high cost of fish feed production and poor postharvest handling. Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) program, funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB), is a knowledge- and innovation-based response to the need to scale up proven technologies across Africa. In meeting the Feed Africa strategy implementation for aquatic foods, an Aquaculture Compact led by WorldFish was created, with the aim to boost production and productivity. Both soft and hard technologies were deployed with activities implemented through capacity building, demonstrations, outreaches, hatchery and genetics improvement, technology and innovation dissemination, and efficient project management. Aquaculture technologies towards mass production of monosex tilapia and quality catfish seed were produced in hapa, in addition to low-cost fish feed production and fish value development.
Results and lessons learnt in 12 African countries (Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Togo and Zambia) provide opportunities for scaling up. For example, adoption of the technologies disseminated produced 177,358,220 quality fingerlings for dissemination to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and increased the survival rate of fingerlings production to 90% at92 demonstration centers. Production of Mono sex male tilapia table-sized increased average production from average weight of 200g to 500g in five-month production cycle, while catfish increased from 500g to 1kg on the average. Hence, several African governments, notably those of Zambia, Cameroon, Malawi and Benin have secured loans from multilateral donors to scale aquaculture technologies. Despite the fact that the TAAT Aquaculture Compact has been effective in overcoming the difficulties associated with the tilapia seed production system in Africa, financing for long-term genetic improvement programs is still required to keep the route toward greater production and productivity of farmed fish especially herbivorous species.