Abstract
In Africa, many governments and development agencies have promoted aquaculture as a panacea for household food security, rural development, and poverty reduction. However, aquaculture production in the continent remains low despite significant investments in research and technology development. While numerous initiatives have been directed at technological innovation and transfer, their present scale of uptake is very slow and therefore inadequate to achieve transformational change envisaged in the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. In this paper, we aim to (1) critically analyze the factors that influence fish farmer’s perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors toward technology adoption; and (2) to determine the impacts of technology adoption on farmer’s livelihoods. Primary data were collected using a self-administered digitized questionnaire to 331 randomly selected farmers in Kenya. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to analyze data. Results revealed that variables including secondary education, diversified on-farm activities, farm size, production levels, attendance of extension training, ease of understanding, and ease of handling technologies were positive and significant predictors of aquaculture technology adoption. However, 30% of fish farmers were categorized as high adopters of novel aquaculture technologies, implying that there are gaps in technical skills hindering adoption of innovative technologies and best management practices. To facilitate learning and uptake of technologies and good practices by farmers, a range of aquaculture-related extension and communication materials, including posters, hard copy information leaflets and brochures of recipes in appropriate languages, short video presentations, and radio features, should be commissioned to support the smallholder farmers.
Highlights
Aquaculture production has doubled every decade for the past 50 years (Bostock and Seixas 2015)
The data was collected between July 2017 and February 2018 in 9 counties selected based on five criteria, namely (a) high concentrations of aquaculture activity in terms of number of ponds and fish farmers; (b) high production potential areas supported by the aquaculture subsidy program; (c) existing infrastructure for fish processing, marketing, and research; (d) adequate water resources; and (e) marketing potential based on proximity to densely populated towns
Fish farming in Kenya is dominated by men possessing secondary education certificate with over 5 years of fish farming experience
Summary
Aquaculture production has doubled every decade for the past 50 years (Bostock and Seixas 2015). With the rapid expansion of aquaculture in the past three decades, the industry has experienced boom and bust cycles and received negative reputation for its associated environmental impacts (Waite et al 2014). In the past 5 decades, technological advances in production and breeding systems, feeds and nutrition technology, vaccines, species and strain selection, reproductive control, mechanical aeration, and water exchange and non-technological innovations including improved regulatory frameworks, market, and certification standards, among others, have enabled the growth of aquaculture sector (Kumar and Engle 2016; Joffre et al 2017). There is still incoherent understanding of technological change in aquaculture development in Africa
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