Promotion of Sustainable Commercial Aquaculture in Sub-Saharan Africa

This volume discusses the difficult access to investment capital, one of the major obstacles to the development of sustainable commercial aquaculture in sub-Saharan Africa. The problem arises from a lack of collateral, excessively high interest rates on loans, bankers' perceptions that aquaculture carries a particularly high risk of failure, a lack of knowledge, by farmers, of the modalities of applying for loans and, on the part of lenders, a lack of or limited information on commercially successful aquaculture enterprises in the region. While some of the lenders' perceptions are valid - particularly in instances where the industry is not yet established and difficulties could occur as a result of local unavailability of necessary inputs, the market is untested and there are no examples of commercial success that could offer an indication of viability - preliminary evidence seems to indicate that banks tend to exaggerate the likelihood of failure of commercial aquaculture projects.