New company seeks to exploit TZ’s untapped fishing sector

Good for Africa technicians work on one of the large boats that are being built by the Dar es Salaam-based company. PHOTO|THE CITIZEN CORRESPONDENT      

By Alex Malanga, BusinessWeek Correspondent

In Summary

He has always believed that there are a lot of untapped potentials in fishing which require the eye and ear of the schooled one to turn the sector into a serious commercial undertaking that can generate tens of thousands of employment for the country’s youth.

Dar es Salaam. Tony Mwanri thought of venturing into fishing during his days as a university student.

He has always believed that there are a lot of untapped potentials in fishing which require the eye and ear of the schooled one to turn the sector into a serious commercial undertaking that can generate tens of thousands of employment for the country’s youth.

A 2013 survey by a non-governmental organisation, Restless Development, indicates that Tanzania’s job market absorbs only between 50,000 to 60,000 of the 900,000 youth who leave schools, colleges and universities each year.

But according to Mr Mwanri, if fishing is formalised and taken as a serious commercial undertaking, it can employ up to one million youths.

In essence, this means that fishing can become one of the three major sources of employment opportunities in the country - along with farming, manufacturing and tourism – if taken seriously and with concerted efforts from both the public and private sectors.

The National Bureau of Statistics’ 2013 Formal Sector Employment and Earnings Survey Analytical Report put the total number of employees in the formal sector in Tanzania Mainland at 1,858,969 in 2013 – up from 1,550,018 in 2012.

“Thus, if graduates find their way into fishing and consider the trade to be their bread and butter, then unemployment will be a thing of the past,” he tells BusinessWeek in an interview.

It was basing on such an ideology that Tony - who possesses a Bachelor of Science degree in Structural and Civil Engineering from the University of Dar es Salaam – decided to get into fishing upon meeting a person who held similar attitudes.

With Hugo Van Lawick, they decided to establish a boat-building company known as Good for Africa.

So far, the Dar es Salaam-based company – which is one of the two or three boat-building firms in the country - has built over 20 boats from fibre. “With the idea of protecting our environment by saving our trees, we decided to come up with fibre as raw material for building boats,” he explains.

Fibre has several advantages over timber: “You do not need to service it regularly while boats made from timber must undergo routine servicing - at least once in every ten weeks….since fibre is lighter that timber, boats made of the former will consume less fuel than timber-boats,” he says.

The ice-box constructed in a fibre boat can always be intact and this gives them an advantage over timber when it comes to deep-sea fishing.