The project consits of manufacturing ten nets, to be used in agriculture. They are distributed within the ten most important areas of fish-breeding of RENAPIB (Réseau national des pisciculteurs du Bénin), the national network of Beninese fish farmers. The fish farmers using the nets are responsible for the return of the investment. Every fish farmer of the RENAPIB, who uses one of the collective nets, pays an all-inclusive rate of 300 Francs CFA. Thus, after a period of two years, all nets should have been amortized and can be replaced. The Executive Director of the RENAPIB supervises the execution of this strategy. In addition to the nets, a technical support package is given to a municipal agriculture centre. It includes an oxygen bottle, a pump, fish tranportation bags and other small equipment.
Background and justification
A country’s development strongly depends on its ability to assure its own food security, or even food sovereignty. In Benin, as in many other countries in the South, fish constitutes the most important source of animal protein. Originally, the fish was trapped in his natural environment. However, things have changed. Given the very fast demographic development and the resulting overfishing, a natural regeneration of fish stocks has become impossible. Everywhere in the world, but especially in Benin, more and more fishers try to feed more and more hungry people. The consequence: overfishing of waterways, lakes and sees. Therefore, fish farming presently represents the only long-term and ecological solution. Even though pisciculture has been practised in Benin since the 1960s, it is still in its infancy. A significant upturn in this essential industrial sector can still not be observed, despite various state and civil society projects and programmes. A short look at the numbers confirms this: while the demand for fishing products increased from 50,000 tonnes in 2001 to more than 100,000 tonnes in 2008, the production decreased from 41,900 tonnes in 2003 to 39,496 tonnes in 2006. In other words, the demand is rapidly increasing, while the offer is decreasing. In order to close this gap, Benin is forced to sacrifice an important part of its international currency reserves to import of fishing products. The youngest statistics from the FAO and the Ministry of Fisheries show that the import of fishing products has increased from 12,500 tonnes in 2001 to more than 60,000 tonnes in 2008. Nevertheless, and despite the great possibilities in this sector, the thousands of fish farmers working in Benin do not produce more than 400 tonnes each year – which is almost insignificant, given a total national annual production of 40,000 tonnes.
Therefore, fish farmers decided, through a process of creative gathering, to not longer wait for official help from the government, but to become themselves the engine of the development of their profession. They created the RENAPIB, in order to facilitate the exchange of technical and professional practices and to put the voices of Benin’s fish farmers more in evidence through promotion and lobby work. The goal of the RENAPIB is to make Benin’s fish farming much more productive, dynamic, professional, ecological and profitable. In order to achieve these difficult but respectable goals, the most important issue of the sector needs to be resolved first: the lack of equipment that is affecting the majority of the existent fish farms. Indeed, fish farming in Benin is currently not profitable at all. Most of the fish farmers therefore consider it as secondary. Furthermore, the sector is generating so little income that the fish farmers are not even able to invest some money in the necessary equipment (fishing nets, oxygen cylinders for the transport of fish). As these facts won’t change in the near future, one should think about the possibility of several fish farmers sharing fishing nets and oxygen cylinders in a rotation process. It is true that Benin’s government has been trying for a long time to build up a similar system. Nevertheless, compared ot the high demand, the amount of equipment made available is not sufficient, and cannot assure a success of this public measure.
In order to bring some new solutions to this difficult situation, the RENAPIB has initiated a project for a collective equipment of its members, which will be explained in more detail hereafter.
Goals
In general, the project is designed to extend the capacities of the RENAPIB members by offering cheaper and easier access to different services and collective pieces of equipment.
The details are as follows:
• Ten nets of a length of 30m are manufactured and given to RENAPIB members.
• A technical support package is given to a municipal agriculture center in the South of Benin.
• Management conditions and modalities for the commonly-used equipment are defined.
Beneficiaries
The beneficiaries of the project are the fish farmers in general, and the members of the RENAPIB in particular.
The nets will be distributed over the whole area of Benin.
