4 Berchie Asiedu, Amos Asase, Seidu Iddrisu et al.
trained persons at the different levels of the aquaculture sector and lack of
effective extension systems for knowledge transfer.
The most critical challenge is poor management of the farms due to lack
of appropriate skills or trained persons at the different management levels of
fish farming. The success or failure of any fish farm can be traced to effective
management and farm governance. Most fish farms in Ghana are poorly
managed thereby contributing massively to the under development and
negligible contribution of the sector to the overall fish supply in the country. A
lot of measures have been recommended for policy makers for a sustainable
development of aquaculture including the provision of support to innovative
and technological developments, ensuring a suitable regulatory framework that
captures environmental costs within aquaculture processes, building capacity
for monitoring and compliance and encouraging research on the supply and
demand for fish and fish products.
BRIEF HISTORY OF AQUACULTURE IN GHANA
The Government of Ghana embarked on a programme to promote
aquaculture and culture based fisheries in the upper (east and west) and
northern regions of the country in 1950. These regions have long periods of
drought and a single but unreliable rainy season which drastically affects the
humans and the livestock population. In order to bring benefits in the form of
fish for nutrition and cash to communities so as to reduce poverty in the North,
the government embarked on a programme to have more dugouts and dams to
provide a reliable source of water for humans, livestock, irrigation of cash
crops and fish culture. Aquaculture started with the Department of Fisheries in
the northern areas by stocking some of the water bodies with fingerlings and
training some local people in fishing techniques. However, in spite of the mass
initial entry, the initiative was flawed due to poor quality of fingerlings, poor
selection of sites, and production without any business focus among others, led
to the failure of the whole initiative.
In the early 1980’s, the government embarked on a massive campaign to
persuade the public to establish pond fish culture (MacPherson and Agyenim-
Boateng, 1991). The government’s main goal with promoting aquaculture was
to develop culture-based fisheries in freshwater environments in order to take
advantage of the huge potential that the country has for aquaculture which has
been under-utilized for years. This campaign was productive and re-energized
large number of people to build ponds in different parts of Ghana, especially in