Aquaculture
Musika has partnered with WorldFish (WF) to help pilot innovations (both technologies and approaches) with smallholders through the private sector under the Aquaculture Technical, Vocational, and Entrepreneurship Training for Improved Private Sector and Smallholder Skills project. To enable this to happen, the private sector’s capacities must be developed to engage with smallholders participating in the aquaculture value chain. Musika excels in both these areas and is a premier partner of choice.
The organisation operates around four principles that have a proven track record in delivering benefits to the rural poor through fostering growth in the private agricultural market. These principles include: 1) a focus on the market system and economic growth; 2) investment risk mitigation; 3) market facilitation and ‘honest brokerage’; and 4) innovation. Musika’s approach to reducing poverty and creating wealth in rural Zambia involves stimulating the development of a supportive market environment that provides
long term and sustainable opportunities for farmers to invest in their own production and to use the markets to graduate out of poverty. This approach is consistent with the Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) methodology which is based on stimulating change within the market systems upon which the poor are dependent in order to stimulate greater and more beneficial involvement of poor people in economic development.
Additionally, Musika’s approach to reducing poverty and creating wealth in rural Zambia involves stimulating business relationships between the corporate sector and the smallholder farming economy in which there is some form of ‘value addition’ to the transaction. This ‘value’ could be in the form of embedded extension, access to finance, technology transfer, forward pricing, assured off-take, supply contracts and other market services that give not only the opportunity, but also the technical knowledge and confidence to smallholders to invest in and improve their farming businesses.
In all its operations, Musika makes it a priority to understand the role of women in agricultural markets and ensure that they participate in and benefit from improved market conditions. It also continues to take into consideration the potential impact of its operations on the environment and aim to mitigate environmental risks on the health of the natural environment and that of the rural population.
The Objective of the Aquaculture Technical, Vocational, and Entrepreneurship Training (TEVET) for Improved Private Sector and Smallholder Skills project is to develop the aquaculture knowledge and practical skills of students and smallholder fish farmers (especially women and female youth) participating in TEVET to enable them to find gainful employment in the private sector and increase the productivity and profitability of their farms. The project will pilot an upgraded aquaculture curriculum with NRDC for scaling in other TEVET institutions in Zambia. It will also enhance the technical education, vocational, and entrepreneurship skills of smallholder fish farmers and increase their linkages to
input/output markets and entrepreneurship opportunities by testing a private sector-led extension and services delivery model.
Musika will lead the design and implementation of the TEVET-focused smallholder component of the project that will be implemented in Northern and Luapula Provinces together with support from WF. Among the key activities, Musika will assess actors in the aquaculture supply chain in terms of current or potential ‘value’ to the market, and in particular their willingness and ability to make sustained and commercially oriented investments in developing the smallholder aquaculture market. These should
also be willing to integrate a gender-and youth-focused lens in their business models.
From the assessment, a portfolio of clients will be developed which the project will work with including seed, feed and equipment suppliers, formal fish buyers, processors, auxiliary service providers (finance and transportation), and SMEs that will act as ‘last mile’ distributors of inputs, training, extension service and/or ‘first mile’ aggregators of outputs.
Additionally, Musika will support the private sector to carry out the necessary market research to identify commercially-oriented fish farmers and organise them for easier training and skills development, input supply, and linkages with output markets. It will also leverage funds from other sources for early stage investment support on a cost-share basis, increase the capacity of private actors to deliver outreach, farmer training and extension services, technology demonstration and testing, and capacity development of supply chain intermediaries.
The four-year project intends to bring over 1,000 smallholder fish farmers into an ‘improved’ market environment that facilitates, encourages and supports investments by farmers in their own fish farming enterprises. This will lead to increases in production and productivity that ultimately results in improvements in farm incomes. Of these farmers, the project aims for 40 percent female farmer participation, and 35 percent female youth farmer participation.
