South Africa

Project overview

South Africa’s food system faces multiple environmental, economic and social pressures, including land degradation, water scarcity, declining wild fish stocks and persistent food insecurity. Resource-intensive agriculture dominates production, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and ecosystem degradation, while climate change further intensifies droughts, floods and ecosystem stress. Approximately 25% of households experience chronic food insecurity despite increasing demand for protein.

Aquatic food systems present a strategic opportunity to address these challenges. Aquaculture and inland fisheries can provide nutrient-rich food with lower land, water, and emissions footprints than terrestrial livestock systems. However, both sectors remain underdeveloped, constrained by fragmented governance, limited access to finance and inputs, weak technical capacity and underdeveloped markets. Inland fisheries are largely informal and lack policy recognition, while aquaculture production remains limited in scale, species diversity and geographic distribution.

Without targeted intervention, these sectors will continue to play a marginal role in the food system, missing opportunities to contribute to food security, climate resilience and sustainable livelihoods. The project supports a transition towards sustainable, inclusive and low-emission aquatic food systems, contributing to improved ecosystem health, reduced environmental pressures and strengthened rural livelihoods.

Our approach

The project adopts a systems-based approach to transform aquaculture and inland fisheries by strengthening governance, finance, production systems and knowledge. It improves the enabling environment by addressing regulatory fragmentation, strengthening institutional coordination and supporting coherent, inclusive and gender-responsive policy frameworks.

The project enhances access to finance and investment by developing innovative financial mechanisms, supporting small-scale and emerging producers, and strengthening public–private partnerships to enable enterprise growth and market development.

At the production level, it supports the adoption of sustainable and climate-smart aquaculture systems, including low-trophic species, circular production technologies and improved feed and seed systems. It also strengthens infrastructure, technical capacity, and extension services to support scalable, context-appropriate production models across marine and freshwater systems.

Knowledge generation, innovation, and learning are central, including monitoring systems, training, and the dissemination of best practices to support adaptive management and inform future policy and investment decisions. 

Sites

The project focuses on four priority sites:

• West Coast (including Saldanha Bay)
• East Coast (including Hamburg)
• Vhembe District
• Aquaculture Technology Demonstration Centre (Free State Province)