Uganda’s aquaculture sub-sector holds immense potential for enhancing food and nutrition security, generating income, and creating employment. With the national targets of producing one million tons of fish anually from aquaculture by the year 2030, the sector is strategically positioned to address pressing development needs. However, growth remains constrained by limited technical capacity, inadequate skills, and weak value chain linkages. Unlocking this potential requires a multi-faceted human capacity development strategy that equips stakeholders with technical, business, and environmental management skills. Key to this is implementing inclusive, hands-on, short-term training programs tailored for all the aquaculture value chain actors. These programs should go beyond basic farming techniques to cover the entire value chain, including fish health, post-harvest handling, value addition, market access, and business planning. Inclusion of women, youth, and persons with disabilities is essential for equitable sectoral growth.
Strengthening partnerships between academia, research, industries, and the government is vital for producing fit-for-purpose graduates. This includes joint curriculum reviews, experiential learning through internships and collaborative research that address practical industry challenges. Such linkages foster innovation and align academic outputs with market needs. Promoting best management practices (BMPs) is essential for sustainable and climate-resilient aquaculture. Hence, initiatives like Promoting Environmentally Sustainable Commercial Aquaculture (PESCA), project in Uganda, provide critical models for balancing productivity with sustainability. This ensures that aquaculture growth maintains ecological integrity, promotes long-term viability and climate resilience. Digital platforms offer scalable solutions for training delivery, enabling wide dissemination of materials such as Uganda’s aquaculture training compendium.
Finally, establishing structured follow-up mechanisms after training ensures knowledge and skills are applied and results in measurable improvements. In conclusion, Uganda’s experience with collaborative capacity building Ademonstrates that a strategic, inclusive, and integrated approach to human capacity development is key to transforming aquaculture into a commercially viable and sustainable sector. These insights offer valuable guidance for similar efforts across Sub-Saharan Africa.