African aquaculture is growing rapidly, gradually shifting its focus from food security to commercial production. With the objective of improving the sustainability of the sector, the TradeCom Facility of the European Union funded a project aimed at exploring the potential for developing an ethical/fair-trade label for African aquaculture.

As part of the project, which was implemented through collaboration between ICAFIS, Imani Development and the University of Stirling (UK), ICAFIS Director and Team Leader Flavio Corsin worked with Commercial Aquaculture Producers of Africa (CAPA), governments and other stakeholders in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Following several field activities a Validation Workshop was held in Nairobi on 22-25 November 2010 to gather the views of the people involved on the outcomes of the project.

Agreement was reached among workshop participants that a label for African aquaculture products would be very beneficial to the sector. Such label should be aligned as much as possible to a credible aquaculture certification scheme (i.e. the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, ASC) but cater for the needs of both African and international export markets.

The project team, which in addition to Flavio included also John Bostock (university of Stirling), John McGrath, Armin Lalui and Guilherme Kessler (Imani Development), is now planning follow up activities to implement the priorities identified at the Nairobi workshop