Twenty five youth invest in fish farming

What you need to know:

  • To boost aquaculture and create employment, 25 youth have formed a group of fish farmers.
  • They have constructed fish ponds and fish fingerling hatchery. They will be producing 3 million fish annually.
  • Their hatchery would have a capacity to produce 200,000 fingerlings a month

Dar es Salaam. Twenty-five young people have teamed up to engage in fish farming, and their project is doing well.

The youth — 10 of them Form VI leavers and the rest school dropouts — started fish farming seven years ago at Kitunda, and now have Sh25 million, which has been invested in constructing fish ponds and fish fingerling hatchery. Mr Ambonisye Mwaikombe, CEO of the group called Green Fish Investment (GFI), told BusinessWeek: “We have ponds where we can farm three million fish annually. Our hatchery can produce 200,000 fish fingerlings every month for sale.” According to him, before end of this year, GFI intends to start selling each fingerling at between Sh50 and Sh100.

“We will sell them at a low price. Elsewhere they are sold at Sh500 each. Fish farmers should take that opportunity to buy from us,” he said.

GFI uses local technology to prepare fish feeds. Raw materials are source locally to cheap prices of fingerlings.

“The move is to embark on local technology so that we do not spend a lot of money to buy technologies from abroad.”

Dr Charles Mahika of the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development explained that huge investment in aquaculture was vital to increase fish production and create jobs.

According to Dr Mahika, who is the director of Aquaculture Division in the ministry, the global fish production is inadequate as demand outmatches supply.

“The private sector should take this opportunity to invest in aquaculture to produce more fish for export. It should also exploit the opportunities in Lake Victoria whose biggest part is owned by Tanzania,” he said.

“Fifty-four per cent of the lake is in Tanzania while the remaining 46 per cent is shared by Kenya and Uganda. Unfortunately, we have not exploited its potential fully.”

He noted that 800,000 youth enter the labour market annually, but jobs are hard to come by. “Fish farming is a huge opportunity for them.”

Youth represent a tremendous potential development of human capital which a nation cannot afford to neglect and want the government to exempt taxes for equipment used in aquaculture.