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Khaiko Makwela Wali Overview of the Fisheries and Aquaculture at Cape Maclear in Malawi
ape Maclear traditionally known as Chembe is a small fishing village situated in Mangochi District at the Southern tip of Lake Malawi. Cape Maclear is a fishing village with a population of about 10,000. The fishermen live in the centre of the town, while either end of the village caters to tourists. Malawi is a land-locked country with one of the highest population densities in sub-Saharan Africa. Lake Malawi where Cape Maclear is located along is the largest of the four lakes in the Southern Region of the country the others being Lake Malombe, Lake Chirwa and Lake Chiuta with the Lower Shire within the Shire River Basin also accounting as one of the major fishing providers in the country With 20 percent of Malawi’s surface area covered by water, the fisheries sector is important in contributing substantially to food and nutritional security, livelihoods of the rural population and economic growth of the country as it contributes four percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In the 1970s, fish provided 70 per cent of animal protein intake of the Malawian population and 40 per cent of total protein supply for the country. These figures have declined as a result of the decrease in catches and rapid population growth over the last 30 years. The per capita fish consumption in Malawi has subsequently fallen by more than 60 percent, from 14kg per person per year in the 1970s, to about eight kg in 2015. The decline in per capita supply and protein intake brings serious nutritional implications for the nation, especially to some vulnerable groups such as HIV/AIDS affected and infected people, orphans and the poor. The Aquaculture development project (Framed around the Energy Facilitated Market Places- EFMP) being proposed by Aquaculture without Frontiers, Green Globe Architecture and Christian Aid Malawi aims to address critical issues affecting fisheries and aquaculture development in Malawi. The aquaculture sub-sector has potential to increase fish production in the country. Enhanced aquaculture production especially at commercial level would improve supply of fish protein in rural and urban areas far away from the major fish production sources and also creation of wealth and employment in such areas.
The EFMP therefore aims at the co-production of locality specific culturally relevant responses to using renewable energy for processing and marketing fish and widening value chains. As it is widely acknowledged on the energy front; unreliability of supply and affordability are key deterrents for enhancing elation aquaculturally-based livelihoods. Most importantly as well for women, access to credits assets and markets in their own right need reinforcing which solarpowered refrigeration can do as advocated by the EFMP. The aquaculture subsector can also be one of the major sources of fish product exports, thereby contributing to Malawi’s economic growth. There are 6,000 fish farmers with varying sizes of ponds in the aquaculture subsector. Fish production in the sub-sector has been increasing from 800 tonnes per annum estimated in 2006 to 3,600 tonnes per annum by 2015. However, one of the major problems identified with commercial aquaculture is that the species cultured are slow growing and have a poor feed conversion, making the products of aquaculture expensive to produce. Also identified as major problems are lack of organised, poor marketing infrastructure and market information system in addition to imperfect markets. There are other several challenges that exist in the sector and need to be addressed for the benefit of fishers and fish farmers. The major challenges include overfishing of commercial valuable fish species like Chambo, high post-harvest losses, climate change, weak collaboration among stakeholders, and slow progress in aquaculture development due to poor quality feed and fingerlings, institutional constraints i.e. lack of funding and to low quality and inefficient markets that lack temperature controlled environments.
Addressing the challenges:
The Sustainable Integrated Infrastructures development project is infrastructure development that utilises Renewable Energy technologies in the face of multiple societal challenges mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Currently under this umbrella of Sustainable Infrastructure Development; the projects that are being looked at are: Market Places (linked to the added agriculture value chain), Aquaculture, Schools, Health Facilities, Community Centres-Community Centre+ (The
Khaiko Makwela Wali is an Architect in Malawi 12 | April 2018 - International Aquafeed