The introduction of unspecified awards and prizes to inland fish farming by Malawi’s Agriculture ministry as well as World Vision International has prompted a new level of seriousness in the farmers.

Ministry officials in June this year announced the introduction of some minor awards to farmers in an agriculture meeting held in the former capital city Zomba.

Zomba is among the districts where inland fish farming is slowly becoming an in thing particularly that fish stocks in the country’s main water body Lake Malawi are depleting by day due to over fishing.

Such is why people living far from the lake have always trusted in land fish for their nutrition. And one of biggest supplier of in land fish products is Zomba district.

Zomba was discovered to harbour high potential in fish farming in the 1980’s when group of expatriates established a fish estate in the valley of Chingale in Zomba to help in economy. Since then almost every estate in the district is having large fish dams.

In 2005 Malawi President encouraged farmers into the business when he launched a large fish rearing area with in Lake Malawi. This was aimed at mitigating the depletion of fish stocks in the lake.

It has also been discovered that fish farming is auguring well with efforts to increase nutrition in the face of rampaging HIV AIDS which demands huge nutrient content foods.
An economic Justice HIV and AIDS report produced earlier on discussed a number of issues regarding this subject.

Of interest is how fish farming continuously eases HIV/AIDS situations
Take an example of a widowed Cecelia Banda, 54 who did not know her husband was HIV positive until almost two years after his death, when she also tested positive for the virus.

After one of her four children also died as a result of the disease, she was left to care for two of her grandchildren and struggled to find the money to send them to primary school

... Life has become a little easier Banda since World Vision, an international relief organization operating in the small country with big population introduced a food security programme in her village in the southeastern district (Zomba) two years ago.

"I have been able to grow maize twice a year," she said.
"But, more importantly, the introduction of a fish-farming project has changed my life."
The programme funded by the World Bank, which aims to increase the income and nutritional status of households affected by HIV/AIDS, helped Banda to build two fish ponds last year ... Timamu, 77, is another beneficiary of the project. After 30 years working a mine in Zimbabwe, in 1991 he returned home with his wife, 10 children and five grandchildren ... "I think I have been wasting a lot of time and money looking for employment outside the country," Muhajiri said. "What I needed was only the technology to improve my farming.

"Over 1,000 households headed by orphans and widows have benefited from the World Vision project, which receives technical support from the World Fish Centre, a non-profit, international research organization.
Families with small plots of land were helped to dig small, rain-fed ponds, where they raise tilapia, a common local fish species.

There are five species of tilapia cichlids recorded from Lake Malawi, and other species of the fish occur worldwide ... "The basic principle of integrated agriculture-aquaculture is to grow fish in water bodies that are closely integrated into a household farm, and intentionally make use of the resource flows of all the diverse activities on a farm, such as livestock, vegetables and crops," said Daniel Jamu, the World Fish Center’s regional director.

He said fish could provide essential nutrients to the 14 percent of Malawi's population estimated to be living with HIV.

The ponds yield about 1,500kg of fish per hectare per year, which often leaves some excess that can be sold to pay for medical care and household needs. Malawi's expanding population has led to a growing demand for fish, but over-fishing of Lake Malawi and the Shire River has caused a decline in fish stocks ... the success of the fish-farming project in Zomba has enabled his centre and its partners to expand the initiative to include 26,000 farming households in Malawi and neighboring Mozambique and Zambia.