Fishing remains an important part of the economy at artisanal level, although there are allegations that local catches have declined because of commercial fishing by large boats in Tanzanian waters.
Aquaculture has expanded as the prawn farm in Jimbo village and processing factory in Kilindoni have gone into production. This development has remained controversial.
Fishing
In recent years, artisanal fishing has increased on the coast of East Africa generally and on Mafia in particular, a major reason for the conservation measures adopted by the Mafia Island Marine Park.
It has also been commercialised to a large extent. Although fin-fish are important both in terms of local consumption and export to Dar es Salaam (either dried or in boats with cooler boxes), it is crustaceans such as lobsters and prawns, and cephalopods such as squid and octopus which are increasingly in demand for export and which fetch higher prices. In the district capital Kilindoni there is a large plant owned by the Kenyan-based company Alpha Africa dealing mainly in crustaceans and cephalopods www.alphaafrica.com.
Prawn farming
A plan to set up a large prawn farm in the Rufiji Delta in the 1990s was contested by local people, who threatened to take the government to court. They were supported by the Lawyers’ Environmental Action Team (LEAT) whose website contains several reports and articles. There was considerable controversy around this proposal both nationally and internationally during the 1990s and there are many websites which cover this.
Several reports in the Bulletin of the World Rainforest Movement cover both the proposed Rufiji project and other prawn farming schemes elsewhere in the world.
Alpha Africa, the company which owns the TANPESCA fish processing plant on Mafia, has set up a prawn farm in northern Mafia. This proposal was discussed in my 2002 report to the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology, and further considered in my 2016 article in Conservation and Society vol. 14, issue 4. ‘Sustainable development? Controversies over prawn farming on Mafia Island, Tanzania’.
