Since it was introduced in the 1970s, aquaculture (fish farming) remains a largely subsistence activity in Sierra Leone, providing much needed protein to significantly large numbers of rural households and constituting an important component of the country’s food security drive.
Its potential for food security, employment and household income generation still remains to be sustainably exploited. It is against this backdrop that the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources has vowed to boost the practice through sustainable innovative measures in collaboration with other development partners.
At the newly rehabilitated Fish Farming Experimental Station in Bo, a team comprising technical staff of the ministry and other development partners, led by the Acting Director of Fisheries, Sheku Sei, started the catfish induced breeding protocol under the ministry’s National Fingerling Production Programme, supported by the Government of Sierra Leone, UNDP and China.
The Acting Director said the objective of the programme is to produce millions of fingerlings annually for distribution to smallholder commercial fish farmers.