The aim is to enhance availability, accessibility of quality fish while reducing importation.

In order to contribute to food self-sufficiency, government is focused on increasing commercial fish rearing. The objective is to enhance productivity and contribute to food security, job and wealth creation, as well as reduce the massive importation of marine products which has not helped but created a trade imbalance.

Last Friday, 18 fish farmers from the public and private sectors rounded up a 10-day intensive training on techniques of intensive fish production in Douala at the Intensive Aquaculture Pilot Unit in Logbaba for the practical aspect of the course and at the Regional Delegation of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Husbandry in Mboppi for the theory.

The participants produced more than 120.000 fingerlings being reared at the Intensive Aquaculture Pilot Unit. Such efforts, according to the Facilitator, Pr Felix Olusegun Gbaolade, Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Felimar Aquaculture Centre, will help meet up with President Paul Biya’s vision to have 200.000 metric tonnes of fishery on or before the end of 2016. He noted that this is possible because Cameroon has the quality of water for fish rearing, which is a major determinant for fish production.

Jointly organised by the Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Husbandry, “Caissse de Developpement de la Pêche Maritime” (CPDM) and the Nigerian Felimar Aquaculture Centre from July 30 to August 8, the training sought to strengthen the capacities of public and private fish farmers to enable them enhance availability, accessibility of quality fish, as well as have an update on the use of modern technologies for fish production.

“Farmers usually encounter technical problems and we have, through this course, improved their ability through access to modern technologies,” Dr. Ngoande Salvador, Executive Secretary of CPDM, said at the closing.

Oumarou, who leads a Common Initiative Group called “Developpement de la Vallée Supérieure de Menzondo” in the South Region, and Fadimatou Balla of the “Complexe Agropastoral et piscicole of Ngaomokon” in Ngaoundere, noted that the training has given Cameroon a nursery of producers with an objective to solve the problem of lack of fingerlings (baby fishes).