Nonprofit WorldFish and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) have signed an agreement to develop low-cost and highly nutritious aquaculture feeds based on novel ingredients that will be used and tested by thousands of smallholder fish farms in Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia.
The project, known as “Development and Scaling of Sustainable Feeds for Resilient Aquatic Food Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa (FASA),” will run over a five-year period from 2022 to 2027, with Norad funding the initiative through a NOK 80 million (USD 8.1 million, EUR 7.9 million) grant.
It is estimated that 30 percent of the producers engaged in the project will be women and 40 percent will be young farmers.
“This collaborative project will identify and improve the quality of local ingredients and enable feed millers to produce local, sustainable feeds that satisfy the nutrient requirements of local strains of tilapia and catfish in the project countries. The innovations generated through this project will be packaged into better management practice guides, for further dissemination and adoption in and beyond the project countries,” WorldFish Senior Scientist Rodrigue Yossa said.
According to WorldFish, the primary obstacles to expanding smallholder production in Sub-Saharan Africa include the scarcity, unsustainability, and high environmental and financial implications of feeds.
At the project's conclusion, three outcomes are expected, Worldfish said. First is an improvement in the capacity of at least two stakeholder groups in each country to adopt best practices in the pursuit of a more sustainable feed industry.
The second goal is to apply processing techniques to raise the quality of at least 15 locally sourced ingredients, which will then be utilized by stakeholders. The overarching third goal of the project is to provide 5,000 aquatic food producers access to the local feeds.
WorldFish Interim Director General and CGIAR Acting Senior Director of Aquatic Food Systems Essam Yassin Mohammed said the partnership with Norad will help transform the aquaculture sector in Sub-Saharan Africa to be more sustainable, while improving the livelihoods and the food and nutrition security of the people in the region.
Other partners in the project include the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF/WECARD), the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Aller Aqua (Zambia), the Natural Resources Development College, and local feed millers and farmer groups.
Photo courtesy of Worldfish
