Govt, partners prime biodiversity sector for growth
ON her two-hectare plot in Chikwaka, Goromonzi district, Mashonaland East province, Ms Chipo Rusike has constructed 10 fishponds and stocked them with Nile tilapia, a fish species that is easy to farm and fetches good prices.
She harvests between 4,5 tonnes and 8 tonnes of tilapia every nine months.
Similarly, other small-scale producers are increasingly rearing tilapia.
As a result of its high meat content, rapid growth and palatability, it is now the third most important type of fish in aquaculture globally.
Output is sharply rising as small and medium enterprises, as well as schools, embark on fish farming to improve income and diets.
Zimbabwe has a rich fisheries ecosystem with 144 species, 114 endemic and 30 exotics, as well as over 12 000 dams.
Tilapia is among the easiest and most profitable fish to farm due to its omnivorous diet, tolerance of high-stocking density and rapid growth.
It is also a good source of protein and is making a critical contribution to household food security in some parts of Zimbabwe.
Small-scale producers and processors are presently being integrated into a thriving tilapia value chain developed by a local company, Lake Harvest, in Kariba.
Lake Kariba accounts for 90 percent of the country’s capture fishery production, with bream and tilapia accounting for between 38 percent and 56 percent of total fish output, respectively.
The Lake Harvest fish are filleted or whole gutted, packed and distributed to local, regional and international markets, including Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and South Africa.
With its own fish processing factory in Kariba, the company offers good opportunities for local participation in the value chain.
Smallholder farmers supply the feed input, mainly maize and soya beans, and the small-scale informal sector is doing brisk business in the sale of byproducts such as fish heads and belly flaps.
Overall, the fisheries sector employed 3 500 people as of 2021 and generated US$11,7 million in export revenues in 2019.
This is part of Zimbabwe’s biodiversity economy, which economists and development practitioners believe inherently offers vast economic opportunities for the country’s growth.
Zimbabwe is richly endowed with biodiversity and supports a number of iconic wildlife species.
However, its biodiversity is being lost at unprecedented rates through fires, poaching, unsustainable harvesting of natural resources, illegal wildlife trafficking and trade, and deforestation.
Although the country has rich biodiversity with potential economic benefits, there is no systematic framework to fully measure biodiversity contributions to economic development.
The Government has prioritised four sectors as being important for the biodiversity economy, namely, wildlife, fisheries, forestry and bioprospecting.
The Ministry of Environment, Climate and Wildlife partnered with the African Wildlife Foundation
(AWF) to produce the Zimbabwe Biodiversity Economy (ZBE) report, which sets a baseline on the value and contribution of nature, and identifies viable business and investment opportunities through which Zimbabwe can unlock enormous potential value in its rich biodiversity.
The report provides a framework that would help Zimbabwe mainstream the value and contribution of nature into development planning, policy development and decision-making on public and private sector investment.
With funding from AWF, the ZBE report stakeholder consultation process went through various stages, including hosting of an inception meeting in September 2021 to discuss its development and validation of findings and recommendations of the study in April 2022, among other processes that led to the study’s launch on September 13 this year.
Officially launching the ZBE report, Acting Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Wildlife, Mrs Tariro Musonza, highlighted the importance of the study, saying: “The main objective of the report is to ensure that the value of biodiversity is recognised and mainstreamed in development planning and national accounts for sustainable social and economic development.”
She also pinpointed the need for a good legislative and policy framework to anchor a successful biodiversity economy and commended efforts by Government to review various environment-related Acts and policies.
The wildlife sector contributes significantly to Zimbabwe’s economy through nature-based tourism, sport hunting and agriculture.
Sport hunting generates an average of US$28 859 per hunter and US$33 million in gross domestic product (GDP), according to the report. ZBE
In 2019, more than 33 percent of all foreign tourists visited State-protected areas, generating 4,1 percent of and 5,6 percent of employment GDP through nature-based tourism.
As part of supporting the country’s biodiversity economy, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)’s country director, Ms Alleta Nyahuye, said:
“Such interventions should focus on securing the wildlife resource base, financing wildlife protection and management, enhancing incomes and livelihoods from wildlife-based value chains, and creating an enabling policy environment.”
Government officials have noted that the Presidential Community Fisheries Programme is contributing to the biodiversity economy.
This scheme, under the administration of the Zimbabwe National Water Authority, is targeting to stock thousands of dams countrywide with approximately 60 million fingerlings of various fish breeds.
Approximately 98 percent of water bodies are of small and medium size, providing potential opportunities for sustainable fisheries development.
In 2019, aquaculture produced 37 752 tonnes of fish, while gillnets produced 10 929 tonnes of fish valued at US$54,6 million.
Despite the abundance of fisheries resources, the economic contribution of the sub-sector is modest, with capture fisheries contributing only 1,4 percent of the GDP, says the ZBE report.