During the 2024 edition of the Aquaculture Africa Conference, which was held last November in Hammamet, Tunisia, aquaculture executives founded the Africa Aquaculture Business Leaders Network (AABLN) to accelerate the sustainable growth of fish farming across the continent.
The establishment of the AABLN is being guided by the U.K.-based Global Salmon Initiative (GSI), a leadership initiative focused on improving sustainability in the farmed salmon sector, through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
SeafoodSource spoke to GSI CEO Sophie Ryan on this new initiative and how GSI aims to ensure its success.
SeafoodSource: What is the role of GSI in the formation of AABLN and in ensuring the new entity lays a strong foundation in supporting growth within Africa’s aquaculture industry?
Ryan: I think it’s important to ground ourselves in the basics here. It is widely acknowledged that we need more high-quality, affordable, nutritious food produced in Africa for Africa.
We need food production that is sustainable and climate-resilient, and we need opportunities for small- and medium-sized farming operations, as well as large businesses.
Aquaculture has the potential to meet all these needs, but at this moment in time, it is not meeting its potential. The obstacles to meet this potential vary by region, but often include access to finance, infrastructure, skills, and technology; all of these can be solved. Some may be solved by individual companies, but others can only be addressed fully if the sector works together. That is the role of GSI.
We are providing the support through facilitation and secretariat services to bring African aquaculture business leaders together so they can find a common purpose in meeting this potential and define plans for collective action to get there.
Our role is to share both our expertise in pre-competitive platforms as well as what lessons learned from the salmon sector can be transferred to a developing sector.
The AABLN stakeholders will determine what they want to work on and how they want to approach things, and for the network to succeed, it will depend upon their personal commitment and inputs to the shared vision.
SeafoodSource: Where else has the GSI model worked, and is Africa’s aquaculture market ready to adopt its pre-competitive collaboration model?
Ryan: The GSI model is a highly effective model based on aligning companies under a clear objective, pooling knowledge and expertise, and creating a platform for discussion to help identify and implement sustainability improvement strategies at speed and scale.
The GSI model has already been replicated in the Ecuadorian shrimp sector through the Sustainable Shrimp Partnership, within Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS), and now in Africa...
