At dawn in Tombo, one of Sierra Leone's largest fishing towns, small-scale fishers begin landing fish from the sea. A portion of the catch is sold at the landing sites, while the rest is taken home to feed the family.
Fish here is not simply food, it is part of everyday care and trusted to sustain strength and long life. However, as pressure on marine fish stocks intensifies, efforts to secure food and nutrition are reshaping how fish is produced and accessed.
Read more: African countries must protect their fish stocks from the European Union - here's how
Wild fish stocks are in decline all over the world under the combined pressures of overfishing and climate change. This is true for the coastal waters of west Africa too. One response is promoting fish farmed on land. In Sierra Leone, this is generating growing policy attention.
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We teach and research global sustainable development and African small-scale fisheries. We joined a team in 2023 to ask people in three Sierra Leone communities whether, in their view, farmed fish could replace wild fish caught at sea. Our respondents were from households that survive from wild capture fishing and fish farming.
Our research showed a persistent problem. In fishing-dependent communities like Tombo, fish farming has failed to take off because small-scale fishing households don't trust it.
They are sceptical of its quality and ability to deliver the same nutrition as wild fish. People eat a wide variety of wild fish species whereas it's mainly catfish and tilapia (fresh water fish) that are farmed.
For this to change, farmed fish would need to be produced in ways that meet local standards of nourishment and that people trust are healthy, especially for children and elders.
Wild fish as nourishment, care, and key to long life
Fish farming in Sierra Leone was introduced in the 1970s through government-led projects. It initially focused on oyster farming and later expanded to small-scale pond systems in communities.
At this time, the government and international donors promoted pond fish farming as a way to improve food security. But this was largely driven from the top down, with limited attention to local livelihoods, cultural food preferences, or the everyday realities of fishing-dependent households, and it did not gain popularity.
Read more: Aquaculture in sub-Saharan Africa: small successes, bigger prospects?
Our study found that small-scale fishing households in Tombo view wild marine fish as the foundation of strength, healthy ageing, and long life and as a food source that doesn't need to be seasoned to be tasty.
One fisherman explained that wild fish is "tastier even without seasoning", adding that its natural salt "helps our children and old people develop stronger bones".
A retired master fisherman in his eighties attributed his continued health to eating fish from the sea every day:
There is no salt in farmed fish. Our fish sustained our grandparents, and they lived long lives.
Only one small-scale fisher reported buying farmed fish in the past ten years. Everyone else relied on wild fish. As one fisherman explained:
Our fish contains everything we need. That is why we eat it every day.
The problems
Our research identified a number of negative views about farmed fish:
- Nearly a third of the fishers we interviewed associated the white colour of wild fish with the marine environment and its nutrients. Farmed fish, on the other hand, was a darker colour which fishers linked to poor water quality and reduced nutritional value. However, fish colour is shaped by genetics and not just rearing environment, diet, and water conditions. The nutritional composition of fish depends largely on what fish eat and the conditions in which they grow, rather than on wild capture or farming alone.
- Fishing communities did not reject farmed fish on principle. Several said they would eat fish farmed in open sea water, because the taste and colour would probably resemble their wild fish more.
- One of the reasons people rejected farmed fish was that they could not verify the quality or trust farmed fish to nourish them. This distinction is important because it suggests that people in the fishing towns don't reject the innovation of farming fish on land, but were judging farmed fish based on their quality.
We also researched 15 fish farms in two inland districts, Bo and Tonkolili, and found problems with the fish farming practices themselves. Fish feed was too expensive and difficult to find and fish farmers were mixing it with bread, cassava and potato leaves. Fish farmers also mixed rice, ground fish heads, palm kernel cake, and maggots from chicken waste for the fish or poured fertilisers into ponds to stimulate algae growth for fish to eat.
As one fish farmer explained:
I am poor. I cannot be looking for money to feed my family and money to feed fish.
- Two expert assessments conducted as part of our study in Bo and Tonkolili found that most farms lacked standard methods and relied on poor-quality feeds and water management, which could affect how fish grow and what nutrients they contain. Their conclusion was clear: without proper feed, water quality and basic standards, these farmed fish would not provide the same nutritional value as wild fish.
- Fingerlings (young fish) were not readily and consistently available. This led to slow and uneven growth in farmed fish, delayed harvests, inconsistent sizes, and uneven quality of the farmed fish.
- Most farms waited six months or more before harvesting and still reported that farmed fish were smaller than expected.
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What needs to happen next
If fish farming is to contribute meaningfully to nutrition and reduce dependence on declining wild stocks, particularly in coastal communities like Tombo, it must produce fish that small-scale fishing households find genuinely nourishing.
A nutrition-sensitive approach is needed, designing fish farming around nutritional quality from the outset, rather than focusing primarily on production or income.
It means that government authorities must set and enforce basic standards for feeds, water management, fingerlings and testing, so that quality is assured.
Our research has shown that unless fish farmers can show clearly that farmed fish is as nutritious as fish caught in the ocean, it will never earn the trust of communities in places where wild fish have come to mean long life.
Nwamaka Okeke-Ogbuafor, Lecturer in Global Sustainable Development, University of Glasgow
Salieu Kabba Sankoh, Research Fellow/Lecturer, University of Sierra Leone
