EAC Regional Strategy and Implementation Plan for sustainable Aquaculture Plan, Part 1. Arusha, Tanzania
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FAO/IOC ;
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The context to the creation of an EAC Regional Strategy and Implementation Plan for the development of sustainable aquaculture is the following: • In 2012, aquaculture production in the EAC was between 30 to 40 000 mt. This does not include restocking programs or seaweed farming. The five-year target is to double that production figure, as well as meeting the demand for fish-feeds and raw material inputs; • overfishing of freshwater and marine (Kenya and Tanzania only) resources; • a rapidly gro wing human population; • a high level of formal unemployment; • a fifty-year history of well-intentioned development projects for small-scale fish farming that have yielded little long-term sustainability. The only exception being Kenya, which has, recently, successfully developed an aquaculture production of 15 000 – 19 000 metric tonnes (mt)/year. • The need within the EAC for a significant increase in production of fish in order to: • contribute to solving nutritional deficits; 3 4 5 • provid e employment through the production of fish, fish-feeds and the raw material inputs; • provide a stimulus to the wider rural economy; • a significant potential market for farmed fish within the fast developing middle-class in EAC. During a recent FAO/SmartFish/COI-EU mission to develop an EAC Regional Aquaculture Strategy, stakeholders, considering the rather limited capacity for action on the ground of EAC and its implementation arm LVFO, recommended that any regional aquaculture effort should be focused on commercial aquaculture value-chains that include semi-industrial and industrial producers, as well as clusters of smaller producers. The mission determined a number of key issues that must be addressed at the Regional level, and these are presented, in order of priority, as follows: • availability of seeds in the required quantity and certified quality; • availability of feeds in the required quantity and certified quality; • free movement throughout the EAC Region of fish, seed an d fish-feeds; • access to credit and revolving funds; • the organization and training along the aquaculture value chain; • creation of policy, legal and institutional frameworks; • delivery of research and sustainable management of aquaculture development; • capitalization on positive developments to boost production through Public Private Partnerships (PPP); • creation of a regional aquaculture Monitoring, Control and Surveillance (MCS) capacity that is linked with national equivalents. The Reg ion, in order to support the national level, should convince its five member states to develop a long-term, multi-donor support project that will help to implement the above points.