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Fish is one of the most consumed animal-source foods in Nigeria. According to FAO data, fish and shellfish accounted for 36 percent of daily protein intake,1 testifying to the nutritional importance and high demand for fish by the population and the critical role of fish in the national food system. Considering that Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, and growing, this is an enormous amount of fish consumed - over 1.74 million tonnes of aquatic food in 2017 was available to the roughly 191 million people, and more recent estimates put per capita fish consumption around 13 kg per year. Of that, about 1.2 million tonnes was produced locally as a combination of aquaculture and capture fisheries, with the remaining 30 percent imported.
Nigeria is a major regional aquaculture producer, producing 261 621 tonnes of fish farmed in 2020, contributing about 11 percent of the total aquaculture production on the continent. Since the 1990s, aquaculture has boomed, with Nigeria becoming the leading producer in sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for more than 50 percent of the production of farmed fish in the sub-Saharan subregion and the second largest producer on the African continent after Egypt.
Nigeria is the world's largest producer of African catfish, one of the most commercially important freshwater fish species in Africa. Catfish is the most popular fish on the local market. There is also substantial trade in smoked fish to neighbouring countries and to the Nigerian diaspora in Europe, the Near East and the United States of America. The catfish sector supports an estimated 1 million direct and indirect jobs throughout the value chain, a vast majority of which are small-scale producers and processors.2
However, aquaculture production has fallen off significantly in recent years, with 2020 production 17 percent lower than its peak in 2015. Much of this decline can be attributed to the high cost of fish feed.
Aquaculture in Nigeria has gone through several stages of development since the 1950s. The first reported attempt was in 1951 at a small experimental station in Onikan, Lagos, where several species of tilapia were cultured.3 Following this experimentation, a large and modern pilot fish farm was established in Panyam, Plateau state, for the culture of carp, Cyprinus carpió. Realizing the potential of...