New company seeks to exploit TZ’s untapped fishing sector

Dar es Salaam. Tony Mwanri thought of venturing into fishing during his days as a university student.

He has always believed that there are a lot of untapped potentials in fishing which require the eye and ear of the schooled one to turn the sector into a serious commercial undertaking that can generate tens of thousands of employment for the country’s youth.

A 2013 survey by a non-governmental organisation, Restless Development, indicates that Tanzania’s job market absorbs only between 50,000 to 60,000 of the 900,000 youth who leave schools, colleges and universities each year.

But according to Mr Mwanri, if fishing is formalised and taken as a serious commercial undertaking, it can employ up to one million youths.

In essence, this means that fishing can become one of the three major sources of employment opportunities in the country - along with farming, manufacturing and tourism – if taken seriously and with concerted efforts from both the public and private sectors.

The National Bureau of Statistics’ 2013 Formal Sector Employment and Earnings Survey Analytical Report put the total number of employees in the formal sector in Tanzania Mainland at 1,858,969 in 2013 – up from 1,550,018 in 2012.

“Thus, if graduates find their way into fishing and consider the trade to be their bread and butter, then unemployment will be a thing of the past,” he tells BusinessWeek in an interview.

It was basing on such an ideology that Tony - who possesses a Bachelor of Science degree in Structural and Civil Engineering from the University of Dar es Salaam – decided to get into fishing upon meeting a person who held similar attitudes.

With Hugo Van Lawick, they decided to establish a boat-building company known as Good for Africa.

So far, the Dar es Salaam-based company – which is one of the two or three boat-building firms in the country - has built over 20 boats from fibre. “With the idea of protecting our environment by saving our trees, we decided to come up with fibre as raw material for building boats,” he explains.

Fibre has several advantages over timber: “You do not need to service it regularly while boats made from timber must undergo routine servicing - at least once in every ten weeks….since fibre is lighter that timber, boats made of the former will consume less fuel than timber-boats,” he says.

The ice-box constructed in a fibre boat can always be intact and this gives them an advantage over timber when it comes to deep-sea fishing.

While much of the firm’s boats have been sold, the company decided that it was the right time for them to start building large boats that are fit for deep-sea fishing. Four of such boats – which when sold costs between Sh300 million and Sh500 million depending on size – have so far been built. This enticed them to establish a fishing company known as Eco Fishing Company Limited.

Currently, at least 30 people work at the boat-building workshop while another 14 are currently conducting deep-sea fishing in two of the large boats operated by Eco Fishing Company Limited. “Our goal is to employ 15 fishermen per boat and that means we will soon have 60 people….between now and the next two years, we should be in a position to own ten boats and employ a total of 150 fishermen,” he explains.

From the trial phase, the beginning has not been that bad. “It is quite promising,” he tells BusinessWeek without revealing actual figures.

Eco-Fishing is one of the less than five fishing companies that operate in Tanzania’s deep sea water – from Mtwara to Tanga, according to data that Hugo Van Lawick and Tony obtained from the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development.

“Some of these companies are not operational…seriously, there is a need for serious investors in this unexploited area,” says Mr Mwanri.

Many small-scale fishermen are discouraged to go for deep-sea fishing due to the way the continental shelf is in the entire coastal areas of Tanzania. The continental shelf refers to the sea bed surrounding a continent at depths of up to about 200 metres, at the edge of which the continental slope drops steeply to the ocean floor. In Tanzania, the shelf is close to the shore and this means that fishermen cannot go far with their normal boats since the deep-sea is close to the shore.

With such a condition, little has been done to exploit the massive potentials in the fisheries sector.

“Otherwise, with the growing demand for fish in Asia and Europe, this can quickly transform Tanzania’s economy if we seriously invest in it,” says Mr Mwanri.

He says Tanzania only needs to make sure that it promotes sustainable fishing where only large fish can be caught. This entails a systematic selection of the type of fishing gear in use.

As for Eco Fishing, the company uses larger hooks that cannot catch smaller fish. “This is what we mean by sustainable fishing,” says Mwanri.

Sport Fishing (also called fishing for pleasure or competition) is also another area that is yet to be fully exploited.