Africa’s fish and aquaculture sector continues to grow rapidly in response to a growing population, increasing demand for food, trade, and quest for livelihoods. The continent has an annual fish production of more than 5.2 million tons (FAO, 2022) and employs about 6.2 million people (Adeleke et al, 2020). 

Despite an expanding aquaculture sector in Africa, there is little welfare knowledge, understanding and practices of among stakeholders. This leads to poor integration of welfare practices into existing fish production systems, inadequate legal frameworks for aquaculture welfare, and the relevance or impact of ethical and sustainable practices on One Health is not well demonstrated. Furthermore, Aquatic Animal Welfare is one of the least prioritized in the farmed animal welfare space. This huge gap in welfare knowledge, practices and frameworks has caused immense stress and suffering for billions of farmed fish and aquatic animals on the continent. With these and more, we recognize an urgent  need for improved cross-sectoral collaboration, dialogues, movement building, and sharing of evolving Afrocentric knowledge, research and evidence in this vital field to foster strategic interventions and actions by stakeholders. 

To this end, we will be organizing (in partnership with stakeholders) a pan-African conference titled the “Africa Aquatic Animal Welfare (AQUAWEL) Conference”. The AQUAWEL Conference will assemble stakeholders in Fisheries, Aquaculture, and related sectors to promote discourse, share knowledge and research, and foster cross-sectoral, local and international collaboration on evidence-based interventions on Fish and Aquaculture Welfare on the African continent. The conference will be conducted as a virtual event with the following key objectives:

• To promote discourse on global best practices of Fish and Aquaculture Welfare in Africa
• To share knowledge, research, and evolving Afrocentric evidence on fish and aquaculture welfare practices and implementation in Africa
• To understand the opportunities, gaps and challenges in integrating welfare components into aquaculture production systems in Africa
• To elucidate the impact of Fish Welfare on One Health and benefits for the African context.
• To foster cross-sectoral, local and international collaboration on evidence-based interventions on Fish and Aquaculture Welfare