Isiolo pastoralists turn to fish farming after droughts kill livestock

Daring the odds of harsh climatic conditions, Isiolo pastoralists have ventured into fish farming in the arid region.

The pastoral communities of Isiolo have for since time immemorial concentrated on traditional livestock farming.

But extreme droughts in recent years have caused enormous livestock deaths. Faced with rising poverty, lack of food and other issues such as child malnutrition, the pastoral communities have now resorted to fish farming.

For the last four months under a programme called Sustainable Food Systems Project, the county government of Isiolo has been working in partnership with the World Food Programme to entrench fish farming.

Through the project, local pastoral communities in the county have made remarkable strides in adopting fish farming.

In total, 11 farming self-help groups and five individual farmers from three wards in the county have been supported through the construction of raised and sunken fishponds.

"Apart from having fishponds constructed for us, we have learnt a lot through this project. Very few of us had any knowledge on how to feed fish and how to deal with monitor lizards that prey on fish especially in sunken ponds. Knowledge on the nutritional value of fish has also been imparted on all of us," said Adan Giro, one of the project's beneficiary.

In addition, beneficiaries have received 11,500 fingerlings of tilapia and catfish as well as nearly a tonne of start-up feed.

To ensure the project is sustainable, farmers were earlier this month taken through feed formulation training. Selected farmers will, in the first week of September, undergo comprehensive training in one of the national government's fish farming institutes.

Success realised from this initial stage of project activities has informed upscaling of the projects in other four wards of the county this financial year. This is expected to result in more pastoral communities benefitting from 40 fishponds as well as fingerlings.

“Our goal is to address issues of malnutrition in our host county as well as sustainable economic empowerment for our target beneficiaries,” said Charles Songok, head of the WFP field office.

He added that his office is particularly grateful to the county government of Isiolo for providing an environment conducive to implementation and to the farmers for embracing a non-traditional farming practice in their area.

Edited by Henry Makori