5/12/2020 Improved fish processing brings gains for women – Zambia Daily Mail

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Columnists • Features

Improved sh
processing brings
gains for women
 September 17, 2017  7 Min Read

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5/12/2020 Improved fish processing brings gains for women – Zambia Daily Mail

      

SALTING sh
prevents losses and
increases pro ts in
the value chain.
PICTURE: FRIDAY
PHIRI/IPS

FRIDAY PHIRI, Mongu

FISHING is the capture of aquatic organisms in
marine, coastal and inland areas. According to the
UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO),
marine and inland sheries, together with
aquaculture, provide food, nutrition and a source
of income to 820 million people around the world,
from harvesting, processing, marketing and
distribution. For many, it also forms part of their
traditional cultural identity.

This is the case for the people of Western Zambia,

where shing is not only a major source of
income, but also a way of life. However, as FAO
highlights in routine studies on the sector
globally, illegal, unreported and unregulated
shing remain major threats to the sustainability
of the shery industry in this part of Zambia as
well.

“Men’s attitudes have changed. Most of those we

work with now treat us as equal partners,” Joyce
Nang’umbili, a long-time sh trader in Senanga
district said.
Here, poor post-harvest handling was identi ed
as a major reason not only for illegal shing but
also over- shing.

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5/12/2020 Improved fish processing brings gains for women – Zambia Daily Mail

“The majority of people lack knowledge. They

believe over shing is the best way to make up for
the losses that they incur along the value chain,”

laments HadonSichali,

a sh 
trader

in Mongu. “It 

is a chain, the trader believes breakages during

transportation should be recovered by buying
more sh at lower prices, forcing shermen to
over sh or even disregard the law to catch more.”
By disregarding the law, Sichali refers to a
statutory annual sh ban which runs between
December and March to allow sh breeding, but
has over the years been a source of con ict
between local shers and government
authorities. And the problem has been getting
worse in recent years due to reduced catches of
sh—an issue attributed to climate change.
But thanks to a Participatory Research project
undertaken recently, some of these dynamics are
changing, especially pertaining to women, who
according to FAO, account for at least 19 percent
of people directly engaged in the sheries
primary sector, and a higher percentage in the
secondary sector such as processing.
Centred on improving sh post-harvest
management and marketing, the Cultivate Africa’s
Future (CultiAF) Fund project has seen a dramatic
increase in women’s involvement in shing.
According to the nal technical report of the
project implemented in Zambia and Malawi,
Women who participated in the drama skits, a
gender transformative tool, increased their
involvement in shing from 5 percent at the start
of the project to 75 percent today.
“I would like to encourage the sheries actors to
utilise these methods since the improved
technologies have shown that the losses can be
reduced signi cantly and that the sh processed
from these technologies have higher average
value than the sh processed from the traditional
methods,” said Western Province permanent
secretary, Mwangala Liomba, during the project’s
nal results dissemination meeting in June.

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5/12/2020 Improved fish processing brings gains for women – Zambia Daily Mail

“This allows for the shers, processors and

traders to have more money. The interventions
require shorter time, thereby increasing the time

available to women

processors.Furthermore,
   
the 

use of drama skits that challenge gender norms

have enabled women processors in the oodplain
to adopt and equitably bene t from improved
processing technologies that reduce sh losses.”
Jointly funded by International Development
Research Centre (IDRC) and the Australian Centre
for International Agriculture Research (ACIAR), the
three-year project, led by scientists from the
Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, the University
of Zambia and World Fish as a partner
organisation, the project aimed at improving
e ectiveness, reduce losses, and promote greater
equity in the sh value chain.
Researchers therefore undertook sh value chain
analyses to understand post-harvest biomass
losses, economic value and nutrient content
changes, and gender norms and power relations.
“In Zambia, the study found that physical sh
losses occur at all the three nodes in the value
chain and di er signi cantly between nodes,” says
Alexander Shula Ke , one of the lead researchers
in the project.
According to Ke , on average, the processors lose
the largest volume of sh (7.42 percent) followed
by the sh traders (2.9 percent). The shers
experience the least physical losses at 2 percent
although, he says, this is not signi cantly di erent
from the sh lost at trading node. The major
cause of physical loss was found to be breakages
at processing and trading nodes.
Interestingly, “Women processors lost over three
times the weight of their sh consignments than
men processors, indicating that it is not only the
function of processing that leads to losses but
that gendered di erences exist within the nodes
too,” adds Ke .
In tackling this aspect, the project employed a
gender transformative tool using drama skits

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5/12/2020 Improved fish processing brings gains for women – Zambia Daily Mail

during implementation, and this led to a 35.7

percent increase in gender attitude scores among
men.

And 36-year-old Joyce

Nang’umbili,
  
a long-time 

sh trader in Senanga district, testi es to this

improvement. “Men’s attitudes have changed.
Most of those we work with now treat us as equal
partners,” she says. “Some men have put aside
their egos and ask us on certain technologies
which they don’t understand better.”
Caring for her two biological children and eight
orphans has not been an easy task for Nag’umbili,
and she says the CultiAF project o ered a lifeline
for her hand-to-mouth business, as the
introduction of improved post-harvest handling
technologies meant reduced losses and increased
pro t margins.
“At the time the project was introduced, my
capital base was just about K 200 but I now run an
over K 8,000 business portfolio. In the last two
years, I have managed to buy two plots of land
and building materials worth over K 5,000,” she
said happily.
Her excitement con rms the project’s ndings,
whose results show that the improved processing
technologies reduce sh losses signi cantly and
consequently improve the income of sher folk.
According to the ndings, cumulatively, the
physical losses decline from 38 percent to 19.3
percent by applying the new piloted technologies
of improved smoking kilns, salting, use of ice and
solar tent drying. Along the value chain,
processors increased their GM from 4.7 percent
to 25.26 percent while traders increased to 25.3
percent from 22.8 percent.
On the nutrition component, “Smoked sh using
the improved kiln technology had signi cantly
higher protein contents than sh smoked using
the traditional method,” says Dr Nyambe Lisulo
Mkandawire of the Department of Food Science
and Nutrition at the University of Zambia (UNZA).
To help meet the global agenda of eradicating

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5/12/2020 Improved fish processing brings gains for women – Zambia Daily Mail

hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, and

ultimately eliminating poverty, a secondary
project was developed.

Dubbed Expanding

Business
 
Opportunities
 
for 

African Youth in Agricultural Value Chains in

Southern Africa, the project aimed at developing
tools and support mechanisms for the realisation
of agri-business opportunities in the sh and
maize post-harvest value chains in Malawi,
Zambia and Zimbabwe, to serve as vehicles for
commercialisation of research outputs.
Implemented by the Africa Entrepreneurship Hub
(AEH), the project awarded and seed-funded 23
winning youth start-ups (community-based)
groups; trained and mentored over 70
entrepreneurs and developed an electronic
trading platform and business toolkits for
supporting business development service
providers and entrepreneurs.
According to Jonathan Tambatamba of AEH, the
electronic platform has two parts—a mobile
application where the sh sellers and buyers ( sh
traders, shermen, sh processors, marketeers
etc) register and nd a market.
“Once they are registered, the seller can
announce that they are selling sh i.e. type, form,
smoked, fresh or salted; quantity, location, and
price, while the buyers can also announce what
they need,” explains Dr Tambatamba. “This is an
SMS system for now due to the fact that most of
the target users just have basic phones.”
The second component, he says, is for mentors
and mentees. Under this component, eight
businesses have been provided with capacity
building support such as training, but the
businesses are also being mentored by assigned
mentors. There are six mentors who provide
advice on business management through the
mobile platform.
Joyce Nang’umbili says that apart from bene tting
from improved processing technologies, the
Wayama Fisheries co-operative she belongs to

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5/12/2020 Improved fish processing brings gains for women – Zambia Daily Mail

emerged as a runner-up in the business

proposals competition by AEH.
“We have been awarded US$ 4, 000,” she says.

“Our plan is to construct
  
solartentdriers which 

will be put on rent to the sher folk, thereby

generating us income as a co-operative.”

Tags sh processing gains Improved

women

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