Aquaculture in Vihiga County

Kenya has great potential for aquaculture due to its vast water resources and great potential for fish market both nationally and internationally. Aquaculture development in Kenya is still at its infancy stage and the sub-sector produces approximately 1000 metric tonnes (MT) annually.

There are few medium size scale aquaculture firms that specialize in trout and tilapia. Most of the aquaculture activities consist of pond culture that are spread across the country with shrimp culture which is at experimenter stage.

Aquaculture is picking up slowly in Vihiga county as there are approximately 1,634 farmers who have engaged themselves in fishing activities. These fishing activities are mainly being carried out in ponds that were started under the ESP programs in the year 2011. The program is currently referred to as Fish Farming Enterprise and Productivity Programme.

These fish ponds cover a total area of 44.7 Ha with the main fish bred being Nile Tilapia and Catfish. Nile Tilapia is preferred by the farmers as it is said to grow faster, being tolerant to diseases and also has a good caucus quality.

Farmers in the county are trying their best to see that aquaculture works for them. Despite their hard work and dedication in improving this sector, there is still a number of challenges that they keep facing. Since they majorly rely on ponds for the activity, some of them are constructed so close to water channels hence leading to loss of investments to flash floods.  

The water in these ponds sometimes get contaminated thus leading to death of these fish. This therefore calls for more advanced methods of fish farming. The farmers need to be equipped with knowledge on how to go about such challenges, and if possible, introduction of modern fishing methods.

After the farmer hard work on ensuring that the fish are in good conditions and environment, they face the challenge of their fish being eaten by some birds. They also get exploited by middlemen due to lack of ready market for their fish. They need to have access to a market that they can rely on so as to at least get some profit for whatever they will end up harvesting.

After harvesting of fish, they need to be stored in some cold storage facilities to avoid them getting spoiled since they are very delicate. These farmers lack such storage facilities and therefore, they have to be equipped with them so that they can keep on working on the fishing business.  It would be even better if a central cooling plant was constructed for the farmers within the county, together with a processing plant so that they do not have to go looking for such facilities outside the county.

Article by Vera Shawiza.