Samaki Poa

• Region: East-Africa
• Focus: Aquaculture
• Start: 2022
• Involving 5 project partners

With a focus on capacity-building across the aquaculture value chain, the Samaki Poa consortium will improve food security and provide practical and applicable expertise to empower the aquaculture sector in East Africa. The project ‘awesome fish’, or in Kiswahili ‘Samaki Poa’, aims to empower the aquaculture sector in East Africa. Samaki Poa functions as an aquaculture ecosystem facilitator, driving capacity building throughout the value chain. The focus countries of the project are Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. The project entails an initiative of a consortium of Dutch, Nordic, Kenyan, and Ugandan companies that will tackle challenges of the aquaculture sector and contribute to local private sector development in East Africa.

Aquaculture in East Africa offers great potential to support local private sector development, to improve access to jobs and income-generating activities, stimulate value chain investments and improve food security. Climatic conditions (e.g. temperature and availability of water sources) make East Africa highly suitable for aquaculture. Furthermore, the region is undergoing an economic and demographic transformation. Economic expansion is partly driven by rapid population growth, urbanization and an increase in incomes. These factors have been driving up total fish demand, fish prices and the total imports of fish into these countries. By collaboratively tackling the challenges of the aquaculture sector, Samaki Poa contributes to improving the technical performance and the financial position of fish breeders/farmers in East Africa, thereby increasing productivity and sustainability.

The primary objective of this project is to develop, implement and launch a localized e-learning platform for aquaculture in East Africa, covering the key fish farming topics combined with a practical training program in the Lake Victoria region. Boosting the aquaculture sector and increasing access to knowledge and education in this region, will result in local private sector development, increased local fish production, increased value chain investments, improved access to sustainable jobs, increased access to skilled labour, and decreased fish import dependency.

“Aquaculture has the potential to meet the growing demand for protein in East Africa while supporting food security and income generation. However, current local production is hampered by the lack of widely available proper practical training and limited knowledge.” – Wouter van Vliet, director at Larive International

This project brings together the expertise and strengths of five professional partners: BluePlanet, Skretting, Lake Harvest, Larive International and Lattice Aqua, who together improve food security, technical know-how and digital innovation in the aquaculture sector in East Africa. They focus together on industry-wide education of skilled labour by creating accessible training programs to educate 10,000 people, help create 2,000 jobs throughout the value chain, and boost regional export by 4,000 tons of fish and 10,000 tons of feed. So, this project contributes to the East African economy by creating local employment, reducing poverty and improving food security.

With the unique combination of a digital platform supplemented with on-site vocational training programs, the partnership practically educates (future) fish farmers with localized know-how and brings the much-needed expertise to the mobile device of thousands of users, combined with practical training. The e-curriculum allows for safe (Covid-proof) and asynchronous learning, and it has the ability to also reach women and youth. Making the combined knowledge available to all (aspiring) fish farmers in East Africa will help unleash the full potential of aquaculture fish production for the regional market.

The project runs from 2022 to 2026 and is an intercontinental cooperation between five stakeholders from East Africa and Europe. Samaki Poa is funded by NORAD granting NOK 20 MN (approximately € 2 MN) to improve the knowledge gap and productivity in the sector and value chain.

Involved project partners:

• Blue Planet AS is a non-profit network company and has developed Blue Planet Academy, which is an e-learning system for the training of operators in the aquaculture business.
• Lake Harvest is a leading aquaculture producer with operations throughout six African countries, including Source of the Nile, a professional cage farm in Jinja, Uganda.
• Larive International BV is a business development advisory firm, developing and implementing market entry and growth strategies in emerging markets. Larive is the Project Manager of the Samaki Poa project.
• Lattice Aquaculture Limited is a Kenyan-based aquaculture organisation, providing vocational training and aquaculture support activities covering the East Africa region.
• Skretting is a leading animal nutrition company offering solutions for aquaculture and livestock.

If you have any questions regarding the project Samaki Poa, contact Niels Kreijger at niels.kreijger@larive.com