As fish farming has expanded across the continent, aquatic animal and seaweed farmers across the continent have increasingly become concerned about the status of aquatic biosecurity, in the holistic sense. The status of aquatic animal welfare, impacts of pollution and erratic weather patterns on water quality especially for those farming in large aquatic ecosystems and access to quality feeds and other aquatic veterinary inputs vis-à-vis growing concerns over antimicrobial use and aquatic antimicrobial resistance are issues several producers are grappling with. The consequent impacts for food-safety affect certification and access to markets for large commercial producers. For example, practical indicators that would enable aquaculture producers assess the fish welfare under local conditions are generally not as accessible as they are for instance in the poultry sector. This makes it difficult to address system constraints early enough before major incidents happen. Seaweed producers on the other hand would wish to assure the sustainability of their enterprises and safety of their products. The re-emergence of transboundary aquatic animal diseases and debates on endemism are beginning to come forth. Maintaining the integrity aquatic ecosystems is evidently fundamental for aquatic life and aquaculture industries to thrive.
AFRAQ23 provides a continental forum for the sectors multiple stakeholders to share the wealth of experience from practitioners, industry, research and policy to enable the sector deliberate options to abate negative impacts of the above issues to foster sustainable aquaculture growth. AFRAQ23 provides a broad range of opportunities for sharing ideas, learning, establishing business-to-business linkages and networking through its plenary sessions, side events, exhibition and study tours. This thematic area will cover all these facets.