Malawi is reporting dramatic success in building a tilapia industry, with help from Chinese expertise and British aid.
Adult fish production has jumped from an average of 1.2 tons hectare in 2014 to the current six tons per hectare, according to a Malawian official, Steven Donda. Donda, the deputy head of the National Fishery Authority of Malawi, made his remarks while addressing conference in the southern Chinese city of Haikou, Hainan Province – the country’s tilapia heartland.
Donda lauded progress made under a Chinese training project that is creating pellet-feed production units using local ingredients. Tilapia seed production went from a mere 30,000 to 2016 more than two million under the project, which ran for three years.
The conference heard how over the past three years, the Freshwater Centre of the Chinese Academy of Fisheries sent a six-person team to Malawi to study local conditions and offer technical guidance. Among the team was China’s top tilapia scientist, Yang Hong. Meanwhile, eight students from Malawi and Uganda are enrolled in a postgraduate program being at the center, funded in part by British aid.
Representatives from Britain’s Department of International Development attended the conference. Also on hand in Haikou was Zhao Weining, the deputy director of the Ministry of Agriculture International Cooperation Department. Britain gave Malawi GBP 300 million (USD 384.2 million, EUR 356.8 million) in aid between 2009 and 2013, but stopped giving aid to government from 2013 and now only funds projects through NGOs.
