A Review of Aquaculture Production in Tanzania; Recent Status, Challenges and Opportunities, and Its Impact in Poverty Alleviation

Tanzania endowed with abundant water resources with a huge potential to develop marine and freshwater aquaculture. Efficient utilization of these resources are required as the demand of fish is increasing with increase in the population of an average of 2.47% per year. Due to that, a gap between fish supply and demand is widening which in turn causes low fish protein supply leading to malnutrition. To bridge this gap, several strategies have been implemented by the government including fish importation to supplement fish shortage in country. However, this strategy seems to be unable to satisfy the fish demand of the large population due to high importation costs. Therefore, a review was conducted to explore recent aquaculture production in Tanzania, challenges and opportunities, different strategies implemented, as well as impacts in poverty alleviation. Several government reports and online-published papers were explored. Therefore, this review indicates a remarkable increased in fish production due to fish species diversification, government support and private sector investment. Hence, provide more opportunities to the people to be employed and earn money, as well as availability of protein from fish to improve their nutrition status. In addition, this review suggest some areas to be emphasized including; development of technology and investment in seeds and feeds production, investigation of alternative protein sources for fish, policies harmonization, and financing mechanism development.