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In rural areas of Africa, animal protein is often in short supply and therefore lacking in the diet. Fish is a high-protein and highly appreciated food item, but fresh fish is frequently difficult to obtain. The importance of fish and other aquatic products is widely recognized, and development programmes have devoted much effort to stimulating increased production of these products. Many of these efforts have targeted aquaculture, including culture-based fisheries, as a means of increasing fish availability.
Since 1975 the approach to aquaculture development by UNDP and FAO has been based on the framework developed in the Kyoto strategy, which concentrated on the development and transmittal of technology and the transfer of proven techniques, focusing on the operation of regional centres for training, research and information dissemination. This strategy was reconfirmed by the FAO World Conference on Fisheries Management and Development, Rome, in 1984.
Typical aquaculture development projects started with on-station research examining the optimal combination of fish species and culture systems. The results were then made available to farmers in the region through a variety of extension methods. These production systems were considered feasible when they suited a particular set of biological and physical environments, but were seldom adopted efficiently and effectively by the local population.
A review of results of projects using these development approaches showed that many aquaculture activities did not produce the expected effects in terms of nutrition, employment or higher income. According to the UNDP/FAO/Norway Thematic Evaluation of Aquaculture (1987), a fundamental weakness in the current strategy was the assumption that the problem was technology-oriented and did not focus on the need to establish the economic viability and social acceptability of the culture practices proposed.
The conflict between the availability of a technology and its non adoption indicated that certain aspects of technology development and adoption were overlooked in the strategy for the promotion of aquaculture. To rectify this omission, the establishment of a programme aimed at the development of methodologies for the promotion of aquaculture was jusüfied.
After the Thematic Evaluation of the Kyoto strategy, the Aquaculture for Local Community Development Programme (ALCOM) became FAO's first attempt at methodology development with an improved approach based on participation, integration and sustainability. ALCOM started with a preparatory phase from October 1986 to October 1989. Its aim was to prepare an interregional programme for the development, testing and of appropriate aquaculture methods by which rural people could improve their standards of living. A five-year programme, from October 1989 to October 1990, was subsequently formulated to address aquaculture and farming systems, the utilization of small water bodies (SWBs) for aquaculture and fisheries, extension and training, women and youth in aquaculture development, environmental aspects of agriculture and information gathering for national planning and project design. ALCOM was originally funded by the Government of Sweden, but later received support from other donors, including the Government of Belgium, which supported the current project.
The Thematic Evaluation had recommended that more attention be given to improving the use of existing SWBs, such as dams, stock-watering reservoirs and borrow pits, for fish production in rural communities. Many small reservoirs had been built in Southern Africa, but fish production had been a secondary function. Although spontaneous SWB fisheries had appeared in a few areas, governments had been unable to direct attention to the further development of this activity. The current project was therefore designed to focus on the numerous dams and reservoirs in Southern Africa. These dams and reservoirs, with water surfaces of 1 ha to 2 000 ha, were classified as SWBs. This classification was subsequently expanded to include all inland waters with a surface area greater than one hectare.
The project addressed the apparent under-utilization of SWBs and the acknowledged lack of understanding of their potential and management. Such an understanding should be based on sound biophysical and socio-economic investigations leading to methods for enhanced management and the multiple use of resources, including improved fish production.
Once the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of selected enhanced management methods for SWB fisheries and aquaculture have been tested and demonstrated, local development institutions should begin using these methods as part of their rural extension services.
The ultimate beneficiaries are smallholder farming communities in the region, which depend on mixed small-scale agriculture for their livelihood. The direct beneficiaries are, besides smallholder farmers participating in pilot projects, staff of national institutions through which the activities were carried out.