**1. Introduction**

Aquaculture is one of the world's fastest growing food production sectors with great potential for food supply, poverty alleviation, and enhanced trade and economic benefits, as targeted by sustainable development goals SDGs. The contribution of aquaculture to global fish supply increased from 3.9 percent in 1970 to over 41.3 percent in 2011 amounting to 63.7 million metric tonnes valued over USD 119 billion [1]. Its average growth rate of 8.8 percent has outpaced capture fisheries (1.2%) and terrestrial farmed meat production (2.8%) [1]. Aquaculture accounts for around 50 percent of seafood supply globally [2]. This quantity is expected to increase substantially as population increases (**Figure 1**). Aquaculture has gained much importance globally due to a decline in wild stock from natural water bodies; thus, aquaculture plays a key role in augmenting dwindling catch capture fisheries. It is well known that among other challenges facing the aquaculture sector, availability and quality of feeds affect its growth particularly in sub-Saharan (see for example [4–10]). Despite this challenge, aquaculture has been considered as one of the economic activities that contribute to poverty reduction, food security, and nutrition in the sub-Saharan Africa [4, 11, 12] and Asian countries [1, 13–17].

In order to realize the contribution of aquaculture in the alleviation of poverty and improvement of food security, development agencies should broaden their focus beyond poor/subsistence producers to include small and medium enterprises adopting a value chain perspective [18]. Bangladesh, which is among developing countries, has proven that aquaculture intervention in resource poor and marginalized group marked an increase in income savings and frequency of fish consumption [19]. Although small-scale fish farmers play a big role in poverty reduction and food security, the intensification from extensive to semi-intensive is essential [20]. However, for the intensification to take place, there should be an increase in investment in technological innovation and transfer through (i) Nutrition, feeds and feeding management, and (ii) low-impact production systems. This paper discusses

**Figure 1.** *Freshwater Aquaculture trend for African countries from 1990 to 2018 (data analyzed by this study see [3]).*

**57**

**Table 1.**

*Animal Waste and Agro-by-Products: Valuable Resources for Producing Fish at Low Costs…*

the valorization of animal waste/by products and plants/crops-by-products to produce fish at low cost in order to increase nutrition and reduce food insecurity.

Africa's fisheries output is dominated by capture fisheries, but the contribution of aquaculture to the total amount of fish produced in the region has grown at a steady pace over the past decade (**Figure 1**). In these countries, fish is produced from capture fisheries and aquaculture. However, fish catches from wild sources have been declining, due to multiple anthropogenic pressures including climate change, overfishing, habitat destruction, invasion of non-native species, illegal, and unregulated fishing, and poor governance [21]. For example, consumption in the Eastern Africa region was projected to increase from 4.80 kg in 2013 to 5.49 kg by 2022 [22]. This implies that in order to meet the gap between fish production and the increasing demand for food fish, aquaculture production must double by 2050 to satisfy the Africa's fast-growing human population [23]. An appropriate way of keeping this sector growing constantly is the development of new researches aimed at determining the benefits of using different and cheap resources of feeds and determining how these strategies influence economic and productive parameters.

**Country Total production Percent** Egypt 930,344 70.476 Nigeria 160,114 12.129 Ghana 70,628 5.350 Uganda 70,095 5.310 Zambia 17,500 1.326 Kenya 12,160 0.921 Tanzania 11,000 0.833 Zimbabwe 10,500 0.795 Malawi 5036 0.381 Rwanda 4526 0.343 Mali 3524 0.267 Congo 3185 0.241 Cã'te d'Ivoire 3000 0.227 Benin 2802 0.212 Lesotho 2500 0.189 Madagascar 2372 0.180 Algeria 2045 0.155 Angola 1752 0.133 South Africa 1503 0.114 Burundi 1455 0.110 Others 4045 0.306 Total 1,320,086.62 100

*Freshwater aquaculture production (tones) in Africa by country in 2018. (data analyzed by this study see [3]).*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95057*

**2. Aquaculture production in Africa**

*Animal Waste and Agro-by-Products: Valuable Resources for Producing Fish at Low Costs… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95057*

the valorization of animal waste/by products and plants/crops-by-products to produce fish at low cost in order to increase nutrition and reduce food insecurity.
