Fish has become popular worldwide and one of the mostly consumed foods. It is an important food for over 400 million Africans, contributing essential proteins, minerals and micronutrients to their diets. Despite this, Sub Saharan Africa has the lowest per capita fish consumption in the world (11.2 kg/ per capita)compared to 19.0 kg per capita in the world. In Uganda fish consumption is estimated at 14.3kg per capita. Studies on fish consumption in Uganda focusing on institutions such as hotels/restaurants consumption are limited and yet they are an important actor in fish value chain. The main objective of the study was to gather information on institutional fish buyers’ requirements with a view to inform fish breeders to provide tailored products and ultimately enhance the market share of the fish sector in Uganda.
Methodology: The study was conducted in Victoria crescent which was purposively selected due the high number of registered institutions (Hotels & Restaurants). The sample unit was the formal functional hotel/restaurant serving fish. A sample size of 603 was selected based on Cochran (1963) formula. Data were collected using structured questionnaires supplemented by information obtained from secondary literature.
Findings: The results show that these institutions on average serve 42 customers out of which only 14 eat fish.
There was a strong agreement among restaurant managers across all surveyed locations against serving farmed fish, with opposition rates ranging from about 62.9% to 68.6%. This is because the majority of institutions (73.9%) cited farmed fish as being less tasty, while 39% citing customers as preferring wild fish and 15.6% citing poor texture. The challenges the institutions faced were very expensive fish (80.7%) followed by limited fish supply 53%.
This implies that a lot of effort will be required to increase the supply of fish both from aquaculture and the wild.