Low-Input Fish Farming Thrives in Caprivi

Steve Felton

7 June 2011

One of a series of short articles about the Rural Poverty Reduction Programme (RPRP), which was funded by the European Union’s 9th Development Fund and coordinated by the National Planning Commission.

The fish was for the aquarium in her office in Katima Mulilo: Priscah is the Namibia Nature Foundation Project Coordinator for Low Input Fish Farming. The ‘low input’ is important, stresses Priscah. The people here are poor and need the maximum results from the minimum input.

Back in 2007, Priscah was engaged as a consultant by the RPRP supported project, to check the suitability of sites for natural fish ponds. Fish farming is hardly a new idea. All over the world fish are farmed in large ponds for sale commercially, and the Ministry of Fisheries in Namibia supports farmers with man-made ponds. But natural fish ponds cost less. They don’t require digging and lining, or expensive water tanks and pipelines.

Priscah (and the tilapia) were on the way back from Mwalala pond, near Bukalo village, where she had been called in to remove unwanted fish varieties. The pond is not the result of flooding; it is fed by an underground source. Floodwater from the Zambezi river was the cause of the problem. In 2010, 90 per cent of the area was inundated with water, which brought the wrong kinds of fish, so Priscah came equipped with a large net for the villagers to haul in as many fish as possible, and sort the wheat from the chaff (or the tilapia from the catfish).

The project only has one net; they are expensive, and money is tight. So Priscah goes from pond to pond, taking the net where it is needed, mostly for harvesting. Mwalala pond is relatively small, and is shared by 15 households. Up to now, they have had only one harvest, in 2009. The fish caught were tilapia: red breast and three spot, and the villagers ate almost all of them. “People are hungry in the dry season,” says Priscah.

Fingerlings (young fish) are bought with project money from private fish farmers, and each pond is stocked with up to 3 000 fingerlings. The Ministry of Fisheries is enthusiastic about the project and assists with advice.

The project has had its ups and downs. As well as the flooding, the RPRP funding came to an end in 2009, and was replaced by the Country Pilot Project (CPP), run by the Namibia Nature Foundation and largely funded by the UNDP.

The RPRP had trained two managers for each pond. It was their job to collect food for the fish and to guard the ponds. The fish are fed on left-over millet and maize grain, and the pond is fertilised with cattle dung, which encourages the growth of plankton. The pond managers were unpaid, and most of them have left in the meantime to look for paid work. So new people will have to be trained by the CPP.

But Priscah is enthusiastic: “At Silumbu they took 5 000 big fish, and Sibula Mundi pond near Lake Liambezi is very big, with thousands of fish. They get four or five harvests a year of three spot, and I want to introduce red breast and green head.” That’s a commercial proposition for an area hungry for income. In the smaller ponds, people will decide whether to eat or sell the fish.

But whatever they decide, says Priscah, “fish farming is the way to go”.

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