Accra, Nov. 22, GNA – Dr Lawrence Ahia, the Director in Charge of Inland Fisheries and Aquaculture at the Fisheries Commission, has described as very successful the outcome of the pilot phase of the Resilient Aquatic Foods Initiative in four communities in the North-East Region.
The aquaculture pilot in Langbinsi, Nalerigu, Nansoni, and Tombu aims to explore the multi-functionality of the water bodies and strengthen food security, poverty reduction, and women and youth empowerment.
The initiative was implemented by the International Water Management Institute in partnership with the Fisheries Commission and the CSIR Water Research Institute (CSIR-WRI).
Specific activities included an aquaculture pilot, currently implemented in four small dams/reservoirs in the North-East region; mapping of small reservoirs in all the five regions in northern Ghana, with the objective of understanding the potential and suitability for an aquaculture upscale; and socio-economic data collection at the household level in North-East, Upper East and Northern Region to characterize the multiple uses of the small reservoirs and evaluate the impact of the pilot.
In an interview at the end of initiative workshop, Dr Ahia said
enough progress had been made with the four groups involved in the pilot phase and they were ready to scale up in the next phase of the project, beginning end November in the five Northern Regions.
The workshop for the Initiative, which concludes in December 2024, aims to provide a platform to share the aquaculture pilot outcomes, reflect on key learnings, and directly inform the implementation of the new AFJ activities in small reservoirs across the five northern regions.
The workshop brought together stakeholders from relevant state institutions, private sector, NGOs, policy actors, development organisations and communities beneficiary youth groups to reflect on the key lessons and discuss the way forward in fostering sustainable aquaculture among community youth groups.
He said the groups formed with the assistance of the leaders in the communities had at least 30% of the group as women.
They were trained in fish farming, group dynamics, and all other skills needed in fish farming after which each community was given two cages stocked with 4,000 fingerlings.
“After the production, that’s about six months, we went back again, and then we harvested them. They made their sales. Now, the money that they have accrued, we expect that they will apply it back into the production cycle. That means this time, they will buy the fingerlings, and they will buy their feed to run it,” Dr Ahia said.
“We are not taking anything back. We just give them the capital of feed, fish, and then the cages. So more or less, it’s a job that we are creating for them. It is as simple as that,” he added.
Touching on the challenges, Dr Ahia said the main challenge was the very far distance that most of the items had to travel, especially the fingerlings and the feed from Accra to the communities.
“So all this adds to the production costs of the whole thing. So apart from that one, there wasn’t any major problem. Nevertheless, some of the groups did not stand well,” he said.
He said two groups apart from the fact that they had a challenge with their water bodies or water quality, the commitment of the youth itself was a little bit down as compared to the other communities, which did very well. So, we have two major ones that had a very good result.
He said, “The second phase would start by the end of November and the groups that did well and have enough money would begin own running. Those that didn’t do well, we want to support them again to stand up and then carry on from there.”
“For now, we have selected another 24 dams within the five northern regions to make sure that the youth in there also benefit,” he said.
Dr Ahia advised the youth to embrace aquaculture for decent jobs and incomes.
“So, I just call on the youth that they should stand up and make sure to take advantage of this opportunity and then become independent, create jobs for themselves, create wealth for themselves, and come out of poverty,” he added.
Ms Sarah Appiah, a Research Officer with the International Water Management Institute and the Project Coordinator for the Resilient Aquatic Food Initiative in Ghana, said the main aim of the aquaculture piloting was to help youth groups to explore the multifunctionality use of the small reservoirs or small dams within northern Ghana by introducing aquaculture so that these youth groups can help increase production of fish.
“And also, the project itself is a source of livelihood option for them to explore in addition to the farming that they are doing,”she said.
She said the initiative was in Ghana for the past three years with other components like the research where we are having a socioeconomic assessment of how the people’s livelihoods were before the project.
There is also the collection of data to know the changes that have come about and a suitability mapping to ensure which dams are actually suitable, how many dams are within the northern Ghana, which ones are suitable for aquaculture.
“So, as I also presented, we have another research that we also aim as part of the project to learn about various group-based aquaculture systems in Ghana, including the IWMI pilot, to also learn lessons of the experiences so far within the production system and what challenges have they encountered, how can we improve them to make the aquaculture of food and jobs sustainable through the lessons learned from these projects here,” he said.
For sustainability, Ms Appiah said all stakeholders involved, including the private sector, and the groups must support the initiative to succeed.
“Groups that have ownership mentality, irrespective of the challenges they have gone through, we think they will make it through the process. And also, the technical challenges they are facing, we are calling on institutions with responsibility of extension services to get close to these groups and assist them in any capacity that they would need,” she said.
“The more the group has the mindset that, yes, we will continue, irrespective of the challenges, the project will be sustainable to that effect. And also, another thing is that they need now more private sector partnership in terms of the marketing and also in terms of financial products, especially with insurance, so that natural occurrences like flooding and other climate or water-related issues that lead to mortalities can be salvaged when they have such challenges,” Ms Appiah added.
GNA
