Minister for Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, Sherry Ayittey, has announced that aquaculture development in Ghana will soon be accelerated.

According to her, the sector is considered an important sector in supporting the country’s economic development.

Sherry Ayittey

She said these during a recent visit to some aquaculture farms in the Ashanti Region, where the farmers drew the minister’s attention to a number of challenges plaguing the sector.

The farmers said fish feed availability and affordability has become a major challenge.

The Minister acknowledged that there was intense pressure on the sector because the global supply of wild-caught fish has peaked, adding  it is unlikely to rise again unless over-exploited stocks are rehabilitated.

The Minister said “already, just under half of all fish that people consume come from aquaculture, which is one of the country’s fastest-growing animal food producing sectors. With the supply of wild-caught fish stagnant, any future increase in the country’s fish consumption will need to be supplied by aquaculture”.

Admitting that her Ministry was saddled with a momentous responsibility to ensure the development of the sector, Ms. Ayittey announced that government will play an active role in the importation of fish feed to be sold to the farmers at subsidized prices.

 She went ahead to advise the farmers to strengthen their association and make it more attractive and amenable to new trends and technologies to enhance their work.

According to her “young people in Ghana have negative ideas about aquaculture. They think they will be poor if they work in the sector and they feel they have no reason to do so. We need to create an enabling environment by supporting the farmers to make the sector attractive to the youth”.

She said for aquaculture to exceed double its current production - and for that growth to be sustainable - the government has put in structures to improve its productivity while at the same time improving its environmental performance.

Aquaculture is an important component for Ghanaian fisheries as it contributes to national food security, income and employment generation, and foreign exchange earnings.

Aquaculture has contributed to reducing the pressure on marine natural resources.

The country’s climate is ideal for the cultivation of tilapia and many other species, the water quantity and quality is outstanding, the labour force is abundant.

But there are two things that are lacking today to make such an aquaculture potential a reality: lack of readily available fingerlings and lack of readily available, standardized and affordable fish feed.