Uganda’s aquaculture sub-sector is rapidly developing, currently contributing up to 22% of all the fish produced in the country. However, the sub-sector is still faced with challenges related to limited access to extension services, production inputs, post-harvest handling facilities, limited value addition skills, disease incidences, and weak market linkages. These challenges hinder productivity and profitability of the aquaculture value-chain with a knockdown effect on rural employment, food security and national export revenue. Although there have been isolated interventions at different aquaculture value-chain nodes, the registered challenges continue recurring. Therefore, there is a need for coordinated interventions to enhance access to production technologies, innovations, knowledge, and skill transfer in order to promote gender-centred aquaculture development. Innovation platforms have been seen to stimulate development in several agricultural sectors in Uganda, where coordination is weak, and a similar approach was adopted for the challenged aquaculture sub-sector. To address the prioritized issues in Uganda’s aquaculture sub-sector, nine zonal aquaculture innovation platforms were established based on Uganda’s nine agro-ecological zones. These platforms brought together different stakeholders to identify solutions to common problems in each aquaculture value-chain node. Each innovation platform consisted of fish farmers, hatchery operators, traders, extension workers, researchers, input suppliers, local leaders, and financial institutions. During a series of zonal workshops, participants identified constraints to the aquaculture sector in their respective agro-ecological zones. For each of the selected constraint, possible strategies, and solutions, mostly within reach of zone were formulated. It is anticipated that the zonal innovation platform approach will be an effective route of linking different value-chain actors, particularly youth and women to business opportunities in the aquaculture value-chain.
Keywords: Aquaculture, innovation systems, innovation platforms , value-chain