Testing the market for bivalves in Pemba
Mozambique has some of the most diverse ecosystems and marine habitats remaining in the Western Indian Ocean region. Poverty is widespread in Mozambique, and is particularly acute in the North, where our pilot is focused, with local coastal communities here feeling the effects of climate change, political insecurity, conflict and rapid local changes including depleted fish stocks.
Marine-based livelihoods are increasingly unstable, with fish stocks and marine ecosystems struggling to survive in this challenging context. Approaches that promote environmental sustainability and conservation while also addressing poverty, nutrition and job creation are a priority, and our pilot’s team is determined to find these! At a time when so much is uncertain, one thing is clear: now is the time for change.
Nature’s own
Our Sea Our Life has been working with communities in northern Mozambique since 2013, supporting local fisher women and men to sustainably manage their marine resources and to access alternative livelihoods to fishing.
One untapped opportunity lies in the bivalve aquaculture sector. This is the sustainable production of oysters, mussels and shellfish within the saline intertidal waters (including around mangrove forests), which could provide an economic incentive for protecting marine ecosystems, including mangroves, within Locally Managed Marine Areas.
The programme is currently working with two groups of women within coastal communities in Cabo Delgado province to set up bivalve farms. Preliminary work has determined bivalve aquaculture has the potential to become a sustainable business venture for coastal communities in Mozambique, whilst also being able to address challenges around food security, nutrition and diversification of diet in coastal areas.
Thinking anew
In this pilot, we’re keen to tap into the potential role that bivalve aquaculture could play in promoting environmental sustainability and providing new sources of income for women in coastal communities, promoting women’s economic empowerment and leadership, while combining technology and marine conservation. To help these business ventures grow, we want to pilot tech solutions, not only to enable enhanced productivity and impact of bivalve aquaculture, but also to link fishers to the market and improve communication, transparency and fairness along the value chain.
After many mind-mapping and brainstorming hours our thoughts started to take shape: the pilot would test the effectiveness of a digital prototype, a platform that could link fishers with markets and which would be developed in consultation with local communities and other key stakeholders along the value chain in the bivalve aquaculture sector.
The objective is to empower local agents, in particular women, from our partner coastal communities to represent groups of bivalve producers on a digital prototype platform that would work on simple smartphones to connect them to markets and buyers in a way that strengthens their position in the value chain and enables them to make a decent living. This new technology offers an unique opportunity for innovation, for learning and the generation of valuable evidence that has the potential to be transformative not only in Mozambique but globally.
All hands on deck
We had a pilot hypothesis, we knew where we wanted to go, so the time to plan the 1st Sprint of the pilot had arrived! Sprint 1 involved testing the assumption that a bivalve aquaculture market existed at the regional level and was developed enough to offer an alternative and reliable source of income for producers. We also wanted to test if there was local demand for bivalve products connected to conservation efforts in the region. Our colleagues at the environmental NGO Associação do Meio Ambiente (AMA) led the market research, exploring the potential of the market around the capital of Cabo Delgado province, the city of Pemba, which is located 45km north of the coastal communities where we are working.
A plan was made for the field work to target restaurants and hotels in Pemba, Murrebue and Mecufi. The team headed out to the restaurants and hotels furthest away from the base first (Mecufi and Murrebue), then moved on to those identified nearer to us in Pemba. Some of the restaurants and hotels were closed (due both to the situation of political fragility in Cabo Delgado and resulting economic slowdown, as well as to Covid-19) or difficult to access due to weather conditions (we were in the middle of the rainy season!).
Beyond weather, regional instability and Covid-19 challenges, some of the restaurants were so busy (which is obviously a good sign!) that they did not have time to talk to us at all or were in a rush, while others required more in-depth conversations, taking more time to speak with us to really understand the questions and the context. It was exciting to meet relatively new members of staff working in some of the places, who were very welcoming and helpful, however they were sometimes unable to help with critical information we needed, including price per kg of seafood products purchased, and where some of the products were sourced from.
Learnings and next steps
Despite the challenges, we were happy with our data collection. We were able to gather some important information and validate some of our assumptions in order to plan our next steps. The market research confirmed that there is indeed an existing market for bivalves and the potential to expand this market, in particular for oysters. We now understand the challenges of oyster and other bivalve product buyers (restaurants and hotels), their different customers (locals, visitors on business, tourists) and how that reflects in their local consumption and therefore production needs.
In hindsight, we learnt that some of the people we spoke with would have preferred if we had brought a product sample they could test, in order to comment more accurately. So we will take this into account within any next steps we take. Now we just have to get our hands on some tasty bivalves!
For our next steps we will be looking into the existing network of actors and testing our assumptions around their interest in engaging with bivalve production and supply chain (from production to consumption). We also want to test our assumptions around the appropriateness of a digital platform (including in terms of the actors’ ability to use such a platform, the available internet access and local digital literacy levels), and its potential to address the main barriers existing in the bivalve supply chain. We really hope that such a digital platform would help maintain a regular supply of bivalves by producers, facilitated by a convening actor, and could be adapted to demand!
