FEATURE
Aquaculture production has almost doubled in five years but new legislation, VAT reduction and training services are needed
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by Professor Abdel-Fattah M. El-Sayed, Oceanography Department, Faculty of Science, Alexandria University, Egypt
quaculture in Africa has been marginalised, with limited contribution to national economies and to global aquaculture output as well. In 2015, total African aquaculture production mounted to 1,969,261 tonnes, representing only 1.9 percent of global aquaculture production. Egypt is by far the most important producer, with a contribution of 60 percent to total African production. Egypt, Nigeria, Zanzibar and Uganda produced 90 percent, while the remaining 60 African countries contributed 10 percent to total aquaculture production in 2015. Tilapia carps and African catfish are the major cultured species in Africa. Aquaculture in Africa is hampered by many limitations and difficulties, including unavailability of raw materials and quality feeds, limited quality seed supply, lack of culture inputs, lack of technical and management skills, lack of funds and lack of legal and regulatory frameworks. Despite this grim picture, encouraging signs of significant take-up of the aquaculture sector in Africa have emerged in recent years, particularly in the Sub-Saharan (SSA) region. The aquaculture production of SSA has almost doubled over the past five years. The WAS’17 meeting in South Africa, for the first time in Africa, is probably a recognition of this reality. This would also pinpoint that the potential of aquaculture in Africa is great. Despite this, feed represents over 60 percent of the total production cost of fish farms and the aquafeed industry remains one of the least developed subsectors of aquaculture in Africa, especially in SSA region. The vast majority of fish farms in Africa rely on farm-made feeds, fed in moist or sun-dried form. This is mainly because small-scale commercial farmers cannot afford manufactured pelleted feeds. Farm-made feed formulations range from single feed ingredients such as wheat bran, rice bran or ground corn, to formulated mixes, moist feed cakes and processed, dry pellets. Estimates suggest that over 100,000 tonnes of farm-made aqua feeds are currently produced annually in SSA alone. Farm-made feed production varies by country and season, depending on availability and price of ingredients and the culture system adopted. Farm-made feeds in Africa are generally of poor quality, high content of fines, high price and inconsistent production rate. They lead to considerable reduction in storage time and the acceleration of spoilage and overall low fish performance.
Commercial aquafeed industry
Except in Egypt (which produces over one million tonnes of commercial fish feed annually), the commercial aquafeed industry in Africa lags behind market demand, while importation of aquafeeds is growing. Commercially produced aquafeeds are often of poor/inconsistent quality. The high demand and lack of local competition also lead to over-pricing of aquafeeds. As a result, this industry has become one of the least developed subsectors of aquaculture in Africa. Most of African countries rely mainly on imported feed ingredients and processed fish feeds, which makes fish farming expensive and not cost effective. Only a few African countries produce formulated, commercial aquafeeds (i.e. Egypt, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe). Having said
Figure 1: Aquaculture production in Africa 2000-2015
that, international aquafeed producers (such as Aller Aqua and Skretting) have started installing aquafeed mills in some countries (Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia), with distribution offices in certain countries throughout the continent. Some animal feed producers also added fish feed production lines to their production facilities, or modified the existing animal feed mills to produce aquafeeds. However, commercial aqua feed production in most of African countries is still limited, and the number of commercial aquafeed mills is still low, presumably due to: • The exceptionally high cost of raw materials and other production inputs. • The demand for commercial fish feed is too low to justify industrial, large-scale production. • The high production and transportation costs. I was told by
22 | June 2017 - International Aquafeed