Uganda’s fisheries sector plays an indispensable role in food security, employment, exports, and income generation. The value of fish exports of Uganda increased from USD 155.20 million in the FY2023/24 to USD 216.42 million in the FY 2024/25 (MAAIF, 2024), making fisheries among Uganda’s top export earners.
In FY2024/25, the sector contributed 2.0 percent to GDP and 7.8 percent of agricultural GDP (UBOS, 2025). According to FAOSTAT data, fish consumption per capita in Uganda stood at 15.4 kg in 2023, meaning fish accounts for over 50 percent of total animal protein intake in the average Ugandan diet (Stanley & Kim, 2026).
However, the traditional economic engine of this sub-sector (capture fisheries) has hit an ecological ceiling. The rising demand for fish driven by population growth alongside chronic overfishing and environmental degradation, has severely depleted the wild fish stocks in Uganda’s natural water bodies. The future of Uganda’s fisheries sector is now pivoting towards aquaculture to reduce reliance on wild capture fisheries.
Aquaculture
Unlike wild fisheries, which are constrained by finite fish stocks and fluctuating catches, aquaculture offers scalable and predictable production. Aquaculture also supports a broader value chain, creating opportunities in feed manufacturing, hatcheries, cold-chain logistics, and advanced agro-processing.
But the sub-sector suffers from structural imbalances, according to the first Uganda Aquaculture Census 2025 by the UBOS. The Census recorded 9,463 fish farms that produced 65,444 metric tonnes of fish with Nile tilapia accounting for more than 82 percent of the output.
However, the geographic and economic distribution of this output exposes a profound disconnect. The rural areas have many low-productivity aquaculture farms, while urban areas have a small number of highly productive ones. While 67.7 percent of all fish farms are in rural areas, urban operations generate a staggering 72.1 percent of the national fish production (UBOS, 2025). This massive productivity gap stems from unequal access to infrastructure (roads, water, electricity), financial systems, high-quality inputs, and technical support. Rural aquaculture remains highly fragmented and dominated by small-scale fishponds.
Additionally, nearly half of Uganda’s fish farms operated with no access to technical extension services. Lack of basic advisory support on stocking densities, disease biosecurity, and feed ratios leads to high fish mortality rates and poor feed conversion.
What to do
Moving smallholder farmers away from subsistence-level operations requires fixing the sector’s two most expensive bottlenecks: feed and finance. Fish feed represents the highest operating cost in aquaculture. The census revealed that 59.3 percent of grow-out farms rely heavily on farm-made feeds (UBOS, 2025). While farm-made alternatives lower immediate cash expenses, their variable nutritional quality causes slow growth, high mortality, and longer, unprofitable production cycles.
Out of the 9,190 grow-out farmers captured in the census, only 410 managed to secure an aquaculture loan (UBOS, 2025). Without formal, tailored credit, smallholders cannot transition to commercial scales. Furthermore, seven in ten grow-out farms lack any energy source for production; 11.2 percent utilize solar energy and only 4.8 percent are connected to the national grid (UBOS, 2025). This absolute energy deficit halts water aeration, localised feed milling, and local cold-chain preservation.
To tap into Uganda’s unrealised agro-industrial fish processing potential, policymakers can draw valuable lessons from global aquaculture leaders. Egypt successfully expanded its aquaculture sector by grouping small-scale farmers into structured cooperatives. This shared infrastructure approach allows smallholders to collectively purchase high-quality commercial floating feeds and access industrial cold storage, mitigating the rural-urban infrastructure divide.
Similarly, China sustained its massive production growth by tightly co-locating commercial feed manufacturing, state-of-the-art hatcheries, and specialised processing plants right next to production hubs (Mbowa et al., 2017). This eliminates logistical delays and preserves product quality for international markets.
Currently, Uganda’s value addition remains dangerously low, with fewer than 200 farms possessing processing capabilities, leaving 87.8 percent of aquaculture output to be sold as raw, fresh fish (UBOS, 2025). By shifting toward local processing such as filleting, vacuum packaging, and turning processing by-products into high-protein fishmeal, Uganda can eliminate post-harvest losses, substitute expensive imports, and build reliable blue-economy jobs for its urban and rural youth.
Uganda’s policy architecture, anchored by the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy (2017) and the Fisheries and Aquaculture Act (2023), is robust and well-aligned with the agro-industrial priorities of the National Development Plan (NDP IV). To unlock the sector’s full potential, five strategic priorities should be considered.
First, the government should improve farmer access to affordable financing through the Agricultural Credit Facility (ACF) while increasing awareness of existing agricultural financing opportunities to enable farmers to invest in commercial-scale production systems and modern technologies.
Second, government should strengthen domestic feed production paired with strict quality-assurance enforcement to reduce production costs and improve productivity. Third, because most farms lack power, the state must incentivise the adoption of localised solar-powered aeration and refrigeration hubs in rural farming sub-regions to bridge the infrastructure gap.
Fourth, launching a decentralised, mobile-enabled aquaculture extension program will provide farmers with critical training in biosecurity and water quality monitoring to eliminate high farm mortality. Finally, building designated aquaculture zones equipped with shared cold-storage facilities and clean processing units will create direct linkages to regional and international export markets.
References
Mbowa, S., Odokonyero, T., & Munyaho, E. (2017). Harnessing floating cage technology to increase fish production in Uganda. Economic Policy Research Centre.
Uganda Bureau of Statistics. (2025). Uganda Aquaculture Census 2025 report. Kampala, Uganda: UBOS.
Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries (2024). Statistical Abstract 2024 (MAAIF).
Stanley, W., & Kim, D.-H. (2026). Aquaculture development and biosecurity challenges in Uganda: Toward resilient fish health management. Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 29(3), 203-214. https://doi.org/10.47853/FAS.2026.e18
