The importance of fish and other aquatic products has been widely recognised, and development programmes have devoted much effort to stimulate production. Since 1975 the approach to aquaculture development by UNDP and FAO has been based on the “the Kyoto strategy”, which focused on the development and transmittal of technology and proven techniques through the operation of regional centres for training, research and information. A review of the results of this development approach showed that many aquaculture projects did not produce the expected effects in terms of nutrition, employment, or higher income.
Typical aquaculture development projects started with on-station research to indentify the optimal combination of fish species and culture systems. The results were then made available to farmers1 in the region, through a variety of extension methods. The production systems were considered feasible when they suited a particular biological and physical environment. However, despite their biological and physical feasibility the production systems were seldom adopted efficiently and effectively by the target group.
In rural areas of Africa, animal protein is often lacking in the diets, because of the short supply. Fish is a highly appreciated food item, but especially fresh fish is difficult to come by. Small-scale farmers in Africa grow a wide variety of crops, under different conditions and levels of management, even within one farm. African farmers are also characterised by the fact that they quickly adopt new ideas when these suit their needs.
The obvious controversy between the availability of a technology on the one hand and a non adoption of it on the other, indicated that certain aspects of technology development and adoption were overlooked in the strategy adopted for the promotion of aquaculture. According to the Thematic Evaluation2 a fundamental weakness in the previously adopted strategy was the assumption that the problem was one of optimal management of research, training, and extension and did not focus on the need in each instance to establish the economic viability and social acceptability of proposed culture practices. For this reason a programme aiming at the development of methodologies for the promotion of aquaculture was created.
1 farmer refers throughout the report to both male and female farmers, however, the masculine
pronoun is used in this report to avoid he/she expressions
2 UNDP, NORAD, FAO. Thematic Evaluation of Aquaculture. Rome. 1987. 85 pp.
ALCOM started in October 1986, designed as an inter-regional Programme and aimed at testing and developing methods and techniques appropriate for rural small-scale fish farming, to be applied by participating governments.
The overall objective of the Programme was:
to develop, test and demonstrate strategies, methods and techniques for assisting rural people in improving their quality of life through the development of aquaculture, either in conjunction with land based farming or as an alternative to fishing.
In 1992 the overall objective of the Programme changed from its original objective to:
an increase in cash income and/or animal protein component in the diet of rural communities, achieved through increased production of fish from small-scale aquaculture integrated with mixed farming systems or as a complement or alternative to traditional small-scale fishing.
The intermediate objective became:
the adoption of appropriate fish culture practices, introduced, promoted and supported through other nationally and internationally funded projects concerned with rural development and integrated into the local farming systems.
While the immediate objective was formulated as:
the provision of fish culture methods and systems, which have been tested in pilot projects and demonstrated to be technically, economically and socially appropriate for the target communities identified.
In 1994, the general development objective of the Programme remained as before, while the intermediate objective was slightly changed, and one objective was added. The intermediate objectives became:
reinforcement of national and local development institutions for sustained promotion among smallholder farmers of the fish culture methods an systems developed under the Programme; and
the adoption in rural communities of appropriate fish culture practices, introduced, promoted and supported through nationally or internationally funded local institutions concerned with rural development and integrated into local farming systems.
The original rational behind the Programme was to identify methods that would lead to the adoption of aquaculture by a large number of farmers. In Africa, small-scale farmers form the majority of the agricultural population.
Projects often treat farmers as one, more or less homogeneous, mass of people. But farming communities do not share common goals and interests and do not have equal access to resources. If projects do not target a specific group, experience has shown that benefits went to those who were already better off. Those who most need the benefits of a new idea are generally the last to adopt an innovation. If a programme does nothing for the rural poor, it affects their lives negatively by widening the already existing gap between the richer and poorer farmers. For these reasons it was necessary for the Programme to focus its work on a specific target group.
During the preparatory phase the target group for the Programme was identified as the rural poor and the poorest farmers. In 1992 the target communities became those who depended on family scale mixed farming systems for a living or small-scale fisheries based partly on subsistence and partly on the local market economy. During the period after 1993 there was no specific mention of the target group, but from the objective it was clear that the Programme aimed at rural communities who operated small-scale activities in a traditional mixed farming system.
Women and youth were a specific target area of the Programme guidelines to enhance the role of women in inland fisheries and aquaculture were prepared as a specific activity. These guidelines were to be integrated within the regular field projects.
The original concept of the Programme was that of a research programme. For more than 30 years, governments and organisations had implemented aquaculture development programmes and these had not brought the desired results. This indicated that it could not be expected that the development of a new methodology could be achieved quickly and easily, and it would therefore be expected that a programme given responsibility for this task required ample time to meet its objectives. The Thematic Evaluation, of which ALCOM was direct result, recognised the need for long term programmes. A long financial commitment from the donor should thus had been expected.
ALCOM has been active in southern Africa with funding from SIDA for more than 10 years. However, the constant uncertainty about funding and future, resulted in multiple phases, changes in direction, high turn over of staff and activities, and prevented the Programme from establishing a continuous mode of operations, and a logical or systematic development of activities.
Although the donor had a clear idea of the purpose of the Programme and the way it should be implemented, the concept of a methodology development programme was not well understood and/or appreciated by all stakeholders, during the first years of the Programme. The development of methodologies encompassed much more than the bio-technical aspects of aquaculture and included research into extension approaches, methods, and materials and into socio-cultural and economic aspects of adoption. However, research by an aquaculture programme, automatically meant for many stakeholders, biological and technical research only. This misconception resulted in wrong expectations of activities and results.
Research programmes aim at developing new ideas, approaches, methodologies or technologies, and through this they evolve over time. Information made available to development institutes allows them to adopt innovations through which they evolve as well. The advantage of a system where research can work independently and focus all its attention on pure research is that research can quickly reach its objectives, and evolve fast. The risk of this set-up with a one way flow of information is that research might get alienated from development and newly developed ideas are not adopted in the field. Research may become irrelevant to the end users, or the end users insufficiently evolve, or evolve in an other direction to appreciate the latest ideas.
An approach that has a clear interaction between research and development institutions, and where the development institutions control to some extent the activities of the research partner, would probably experience a much slower evolution of the research. It has the advantage however that the development institutes are directly connected and involved with the research, which makes adoption of new developments more likely.
ALCOM worked in close collaboration with the various fisheries departments, or equivalent, in the SADC3 countries, and was directed by a Steering Committee comprised of members of these countries. These members were often more inclined towards the immediate development of fish farming in their countries and less interested in research results. This set-up clearly resulted in a deviation of the original research oriented approach towards direct development activities. The overall results of the Programme determines whether the interaction gave too much control to the development institutions and prevented ALCOM to achieve its objectives, or whether a right balance was struck that created assurance through which new ideas were more easily adopted.
3 SADC: Southern Africa Development Community
