Chicoa Fish Farm was established in 2015 on Lake Cahora Bassa, Mozambique. It was built to be an anchor farm for a new sustainable Aquaculture industry. From experience, we had seen that smallscale farmers tend to develop around commercial farms, where inputs are readily available. The commercial viability of the farm is also dependent on overcoming the regulatory hurdles of a new industry, which lays a groundwork for new entrants.
The Chicoa peninsula was virgin bushland in 2015. We built a 3 km road to the farm site, which was completed in our first 6 months of operations. The farm spent the first 4 years without electricity. We pioneered using offshore breeding (which does not need electricity) as an alternative breeding technique.
Today, Chicoa has an installed capacity of 3,500 tonnes per annum and a processing facility with freezing capacity. We employ over 200 local members of the community at the farm. Our tilapia fish is sold into Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi. Through our partnerships with the Ministry of Fisheries, we are supporting smallscale aquaculture in four provinces within Mozambique. Since 2015, we have raised over USD 15 million in equity, debt and repayable grants.
Our development projects are ongoing in Tete, Manica, Maputo, Sofala, Inhambane, Niassa and Zambezia provinces. Our projects can be grouped as follows:
Small-scale farmer development: aquaculture training, technical assistance, access to inputs and identifying routes to market.
Informal or small trader market development: fish handling training, technical assistance, access to fresh or frozen product, equipment and delivery of fish into markets.
Nutritional security: at a national developmental scale, Chicoa is actively addressing the protein deficit prevalent in Mozambique by producing affordable, sustainably grown proteins that low-income consumers are able to access.
Cross-cutting through our impact projects is a gender-intentional approach. We also prioritise a livelihoods approach whereby we seek to ensure that all our activities are actively increasing the incomes of those involved or partnering with us.
In our contribution we will share the lessons that we have learnt in how to approach industry development in our context, the opportunities to accelerate this process, and how to build a business model that attracts appropriate investment.