Synthesis Of Aquaculture Policy And Development Approaches In Africa

This document presents the Guidelines for aquaculture management in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) – March 2020 that were approved by SADC member States in June 2019. Ce document présente les Directives pour la gestion de l'aquaculture dans la Communauté de développement de l'Afrique australe (SADC) – mars 2020, qui ont été approuvées par les États membres de la SADC en juin 2019. Este documento apresenta as Diretrizes para a gestão da aquicultura na Comunidade de Desenvolvimento da África Austral (SADC) – março de 2020, que foram aprovadas pelos estados membros da SADC em junho de 2019.

In the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Region, it is estimated that around 100 million people eat fish and other aquatic foods (molluscs, crustacea) regularly. Aquatic foods are generally the most affordable source of dietary animal protein containing essential fatty acids and micronutrients, and are therefore of overwhelming importance for food and nutrition security, particularly for poorer segments of the population, and for sustaining livelihoods and driving economic development. However, per capita consumption of aquatic foods in SADC (2015) at 11.3 kg/yr is 79 percent lower than the global average of 20.2 kg/yr; moreover, the high consumption rates in some of the island and coastal states mask the very low consumption rates of around 5 kg/capita/yr in the rest of the region. With rapid population growth, the gap between supply and demand of aquatic foods in most SADC countries continues to increase. Taking only fish into account, it is predicted that SADC Member States will collectively have a supply deficit by the mid-2020s of around 570 000 MT per year.

This edited book presents the emerging sustainable innovations in all areas of aquaculture in Africa with a view to create an opportunity whereby scientific outputs and recommendations can be endorsed for improved aquaculture outputs towards poverty alleviation and food security on the continent. Food insecurity and poverty are some of the challenges faced on the African continent. These challenges are further exacerbated by the growing human population and the impacts of climate change. Today, aquaculture has become one of the fastest food producing sectors in the world, with the potential to contribute significantly to food security and poverty alleviation in developing countries. In Africa, aquaculture is at an infant stage, however, many African countries have recognized the potential roles of aquaculture in food security, poverty alleviation and conservation of aquatic resources through their commitment to achieve the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals. The book reviews and synthesize research work from these thematic areas across Africa and provide a unique perspective on the emerging aquaculture innovations and illustrate how aquaculture practices could be feasible and cost effective while promoting social and environmental sustainability. The book also draws from global discussions on sustainable aquaculture practices and provides recommendations on what is feasible for Africa. This book is a great tool for the university students, scholars, aquaculture farmers, investors, and policymakers to understand the scientific based sustainable aquaculture innovations from an African perspective. This book is focused on SDG 2 and SDG 14.

The present regional review and synthesis for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) provides an overview of major issues and trends in the aquaculture sector between 2004 and 2014 with emphasis on outstanding issues over the last five years. The regional review reflects development in 41 countries in SSA for which production was reported to FAO in 2014. The production volume and value data have been derived from the latest FAO global aquaculture dataset 1950-2014 (FishStat).

This document was prepared within the framework of the FAO’s Strategic Objective 1 (SO1): Help eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. This document served as a background paper to present the status of policy mainstreaming and policy research for the improvement of policy development in aquaculture in support of food security, nutrition and poverty eradication. The document was presented in various African fora and received the validation of the stakeholders for its publication as part of policy research. Specifically, the paper was presented and included the inputs from the Consultative Meeting on Aquaculture Policy Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 3 to 4 December 2018, 37th SADC Fisheries and Aquaculture technical meeting in Windhoek and the Consultative meeting on “improving policy development in aquaculture in support of food security, nutrition and poverty eradication” held in Kigali, Rwanda, from 10 to 14 June 2019. This research report includes recommendations by the stakholders to guide the mainstreaming of fisheries and aquaculture within wider policy frameworks, for the formulation and implementation of technical programmes for enhanced food security and nutrition at country and regional level in Africa.

Although policies can be critical constraining or enabling factors for aquatic food systems (AqFS) development, scarce evaluation of the impacts of existing policies means that decision-makers have limited understanding of how to improve the design and implementation of effective policies. This paper reviews key policy issues in AqFS and how they have been analyzed and assessed to provide context-tailored policy options and guidance. Our review shows that countries face many policy issues but have little analysis on them. Despite the availability of a wide variety of frameworks, concepts, tools, methods, and approaches, their application in empirical analysis to solve policy issues in AqFS has been limited. More research is available on local- and community-level governance of fisheries, but less on national or subnational policies and regulations in AqFS. The few available policy studies focus on developed countries, with fewer applications in developing countries where growth of the aquaculture and fisheries sectors is much stronger. The studies provide useful policy options and guidance, and this review highlights the need for more such studies to address policy-related issues in the sector.