Aquaculture in Madagascar

In Madagascar, 80% of the population lives in rural areas with limited access to protein-rich foods, leading to problems of undernourishment and malnutrition. Fish, a nutrient rich food, is almost exclusively available in coastal regions and urban centres on the island. Aquaculture has the potential to supply the rural population with fresh fish and additional income opportunities.

Rice-fish systems enable carp and tilapia to be farmed alongside rice production in paddies, providing symbiotic benefits for both: the rice provides fish with a sheltered habitat and insects to feed on, while the rice is fertilized by the fish waste. Currently, only 20% of suitable fields are used for rice-fish farming, despite its benefits.

To tackle this, the Projet d’Aquaculture Durable à Madagascar (PADM) focused on the promotion of rice-fish and pond culture in the highlands and the east coast of Madagascar. Financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GMBH, between 2018 and 2024, the project benefited 15,815 fish farms covered in the project, as well as local communities who benefit from livelihood opportunities across the value chain and the availability of fresh fish and improved nutrition. The Global Program on Sustainable Aquatic Food, funded by BMZ and implemented by GIZ, is scaling rice fish aquaculture in the highlands and the southeast coast of Madagascar from 2024 until 2028.

The project was implemented over six target regions, covering 590 hectares: Analamanga, Vakinankaratra, Itasy, Amoron’I Mania et Haute Matsiatra in the Highlands and Atsinanana in the East-Coast. Each region is characterized by diverse types of fish farming: rice-fish culture in the region of Vakinankaratra, Itasy, Haute Matsiatra and Amoron’I Mania ae well as pond culture in the region of Analamanga and Atsinanana.

We assessed the costs and benefits of:

• Extensive rice-fish farming: This land-based aquacultural system uses earthen ponds to cultivate fish symbiotically with rice, optimizing nutrient exchange to balance natural feed use and promote mutual growth.
• Semi-intensive fish farming: This method, also in earthen ponds utilizing its natural productivity, in combination with supplementary feeding to achieve higher productivity.
• Intensive net cage fish farming: Fish farming in large bodies of water, relies on feeding caged fish with formulated feeds.​
• Intensive fish farming in tanks: This aquaculture system relies on fish tanks using recirculating aquaculture systems and feeding fish with formulated feeds.

Our SAVi analysis found that when including externalities in the assessment of these aquaculture projects, extensive systems perform on average 36% better than intensive systems by avoiding negative externalities associated to these systems.