Aquaculture for all

Fish Farming Project for Haitian Villagers

Economics Education & academia +2 more

HAITI - Ivory Coast fish farm developer Valentin Abe has been teaching villagers in Haiti how to become commercial fish producers.

His fish-farming project has become a source of food and income for several communities on Haiti, which was has been suffering from the devastation of the recent earthquake.

Mr Abe has two-and-a-half-acre fish farm in Croix-des-Bouquets, where he raises tilapia.

According to a report on CNN, he left Ivory Coast in 1989 to study in the US and first visited Haiti in 1997.

"I was just walking around and wondering why that aquaculture or fish culture is not developed in this country? There is so much potential," he told CNN.

He said that although he could not get private loans or get backing from the Haitian government, he went ahead with the project which he funded himself.

In 2006, he managed to scrape together $15,000, which he used to buy his first set of tanks and initial batch of fish hatchlings.

Four years later, his hatchery has grown to contain 36 aluminum tanks.

Mr Abe uses breeding fish from Egypt and Israel which he grows on to fingerlings.

The fingerlings are then distributed to the lakeside villagers along with feed and a portable metallic cage. Four months later the fish are fully-grown and ready to harvest, the CNN report says.

He said that once the project is fully running Haiti he will possibly reurn to Africa to establish similar projects.

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