Fish farming has not been a popular venture in Kiambu County largely due to cultural believes. The undertaking has been associated with communities in Western Kenya where fish is viewed as stable food.
But one company in Kiambu County is helping communities there embrace fish farming in a special way. Jambo Fish trains interested farmers on fish keeping as well as selling fingerlings to them.
The company mainly sells tilapia and catfish. "I decided to engage in fish farming and consultancy in Kiambu County after realizing that the communities here are emerging to be fish consumers,” observes Willy Fleuren the director of Jambo Fish.
Fleuren notes that fish population in Lake Victoria are diminishing and therefore there is need to practice fish farming at smallholder level. The director, who is also a trail blazing fish farmer, has had to grapple with the challenge of urging communities to buy catfish noting that most communities in Kiambu County are only aware of tilapia. Jambo Fish imports catfish from Congo and South Africa.
Although the government in recent years has devised a stimulus programme to help foster fish production, Fleuren reckons that East Africans are not good fish consumers compared to other countries. For instance, in Nigeria where the serial entrepreneur has a burgeoning fish company eating fish is the order of the day.
Willy Flauren first came to Africa in 1998 where he settled in Nigeria and established a fish firm. Originally from Netherlands, he first ventured into fish farming in 1984 in Holand. .