Aquaponic for Life (A4L) works to promote sustainable agriculture through innovative fish and vegetable farming methods. Founded by Mr. Peace Mnelemba, the owner and Director, in 2020, and now with eight full-time employees, A4L provides a range of aquaculture services, including designing and installing aquaponics systems, and offering consultancy, training, and outreach services across Malawi. While the company has a simple structure, it benefits from the expertise of a board of advisors, Bernd Ueberscher and Torsten Knorr, who provide guidance on strategic planning and operations. A team of employees supports the day-to-day operations, with Mwayi Kampapalala as Deputy Director assisting Peace Mnelemba in management. Mphatso Luwemba, the Data Analyst, uses data to inform decision-making, while Lyman Yusuf, Maliko Eliko Dester, and Richard Beckman handle farm-related tasks.

Currently operating a 17-acre farm near Lilongwe, A4L serves as both a model facility and a training centre for aquaponics. As part of its mission, A4L provides outreach training in schools, rural communities, and youth cooperatives, aiming to alleviate hunger and poverty by empowering local communities with aquaponics production skills. A4L’s current target clients include large and medium sized aquaculture farms and organisations. The company also serves smallholder farmers being supported by various development organisations and some who are provided the service on pro-bono. A4L is expanding its reach amongst smallholder farmers by increasing its product range suitable for smallholder farmers and share of its revenue generated from the target market. Amongst other opportunities, A4L has identified a significant gap in the supply of catfish fingerlings and plans to set up a catfish hatchery at its farm in Lilongwe and sell the fingerlings to smallholder fish farmers in Lilongwe and surrounding districts. Contact: Website Facebook

Facilitating Investment for Commercialization of Catfish Farming

This project demonstrates the commercial viability of a model for catfish fingerlings production, catfish BMP provision and table-sized catfish marketing which has smallholder farmers at the centre. The project will also demonstrate the profitability of A4L’s proposed model and use it to attract investment in scaling it up. The project targets investors, agri-SMEs and smallholder farmers.

In this 14-month project, CASA has partnered with A4L to focus on modern fish farming techniques like aquaponics and the use of black soldier fly (BSF) as a feed for fish. The project seeks to facilitate the commercialization of catfish farming among smallholder farmers to address the current fish supply gap (including catfish) in Malawi. The intervention leverages A4L’s aquaculture expertise and existing production capacity to strengthen Malawi’s catfish value chain to favour smallholder fish farmers. Through this intervention, CASA is facilitating access to high quality catfish fingerlings and technical advice for smallholder fish farmers interested in catfish production to boost their fish production volumes and increase their incomes. It also includes improving market access for smallholder fish farmers. The project uses a “lead farmer model” as a method for sustainably providing technical advisory services, inputs and technology to smallholder farmers to stimulate catfish production to meet the growing demand for fish in Malawi. With a total cost of £61,292 (with CASA contributing £39,682), the project expects to reach 500 smallholder farmers.

A4L seeks an investment of £55,000 to expand its production facility to be able to produce fingerlings all year round and target more farmers. A4L also aims to expand its fish fingerlings hatchery and acquire essential cold chain facilities for transporting fish grown by the smallholder farmers to the market.