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“Fish Rescue us from Hunger”: the Contribution of Aquatic Resources to Household Food Security on the Rufiji River Floodplain, Tanzania, East Africa

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Abstract

Inland fisheries are essential to nutrition and food security in developing countries but remain undervalued. Worldwide, studies of aquatic resource consumption are rare. We use data from a monthly survey of 40 households in a Tanzanian village over 1 year combined with qualitative methods to analyse consumption of animal aquatic resources across wealth, seasons, fishing vs. non-fishing, and male- vs. female-headed households. We find that local freshwater fish are the most frequent source of animal protein, consumed on 57% of survey days. Wealth matters, with better-off households eating fish more often and in larger daily quantities on average. Middle-ranked households catch and sell fish more often, but all households double their consumption on average on days they catch rather than purchase fish. Female-headed households rely on gifts to increase consumption. Our results emphasise the need to preserve the livelihood functions of inland fisheries in the face of increasing threats.

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Notes

  1. 25 for the first month only

  2. Households were classified as poor/middle/rich in exercises held with at least two groups of villagers in each hamlet, following Grandin (1988). No wealth rankings of field-based households were attempted because no groups could be assembled.

  3. At Ramadan, people who fasted typically ate twice in the night. The futari meal shortly after sunset generally consisted of a drink of uji followed by a stew of cassava, papaya, sweet potatoes, and/or green bananas cooked, where means allowed, with coconut milk. A heavier meal, daku, consisting typically of rice and mboga, was eaten around 10-11 pm.

  4. The fact that people would often qualify their choice of stick, explaining that the fish was a bit smaller or larger, further suggests that they were paying attention to actual size.

  5. The datasets analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

  6. In one polygamous household each co-wife had her own house and refused to be interviewed with the other. We were rarely able to survey them on the same date, precluding merging of survey data.

  7. The Makonde people (who are generally Christian) in the area reportedly ate baboons and monkeys, however.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by grants to M-A Moreau from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, University College London, the University of London Central Research Fund, the Ruggles-Gates Fund of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the British Institute in Eastern Africa, and the Parkes Foundation. We thank the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology and our partners at the Institute of Resource Assessment of the University of Dar es Salaam for facilitating this research, Katherine Homewood and the Human Ecology Research Group at UCL for their intellectual support, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. A special thank you to the families who participated in this study, and to our fieldwork assistants, Karim Tenge, Idaya Ungando, and Moshi Bora.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University College London, 14 Taviton Street, London, UK

    Marie-Annick Moreau & Caroline J. Garaway

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Moreau, MA., Garaway, C.J. “Fish Rescue us from Hunger”: the Contribution of Aquatic Resources to Household Food Security on the Rufiji River Floodplain, Tanzania, East Africa. Hum Ecol 46, 831–848 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-018-0030-y

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