Aquatic Foods

Partnership building started during the Initiative’s proposal development phase, thanks to extensive national and regional multi-stakeholder consultations in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, Ghana, India, Nigeria and Zambia. Partnerships were structured through initial planning for research discovery, piloting, and scaling up with separate workshops in key areas of research.

A portfolio of 159 formal partners engaged with the Initiative in 2022. Building partnerships with national agricultural research and extension systems, particularly the Department of Fisheries (DoF) or their equivalent in target countries, was key. In several cases, such as in India, Ghana, Timor-Leste, Solomon Islands and Zambia, this involved supporting the Department and/or other key traditional partners to work together on common investments and development plans for the fisheries and aquaculture sectors. The Initiative also built partnerships with private sector organizations in Nigeria, Bangladesh and India to speed up the adoption of faster-growing strains of tilapia and/or carp.

Our partners include: in India, the Women and Child Development Department of the Odisha State Government and women’s self-help groups; In Timor-Leste, Municipal Fisheries Offices in Baucau and Lautem Districts; in Solomon Island, the Kastom Gaden Association. As well as ministries of fisheries, environment and marine resources in all the countries where we work, we also partner with five CGIAR Centers (WorldFish, IMWI, IITA, IFPRI, ICARDA), UN FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Division and global centers of excellence such as the Earlham and Roslin Centers in the UK (for genomics) and Wageningen University in the Netherlands (for innovation systems and scaling readiness analysis).