The AquaInvest Platform

Seaweed may represent a significant part of the equation for solving environmental challenges, including climate change, and spurring economic growth, but comprehensive research and innovation to plug current gaps in knowledge is required.

A new World Bank report titled Global Seaweed New and Emerging Markets 2023, explores many aspects of seaweed, proposing potential areas offering solutions to development challenges. The 10 global seaweed subsector markets identified in the report are projected to grow by up to $11.8 billion by 2030.

Funded by the PROBLUE Multi Donor Trust Fund, the report, produced by the AquaInvest Platform, details 10 applications that demonstrate potential signs of emerging market potential for seaweed.

These include: biostimulants, animal feed, pet food; methane reducing additives; nutraceuticals; alternative proteins, bioplastics and fabrics; pharmaceuticals and construction.

Seaweed has been cultivated in Asia for more than 50 years, but the report proposes cultivation could be expanded other regions to boost supply. China produces 56 percent, Indonesia produces 27 percent, while South Korea and the Philippines each produce 4 percent of farmed seaweed. Less than 2 percent of farmed seaweed was produced outside Asia in 2020.

Aquaculture production volumes have tripled over the past 20 years and are projected to grow to meet demand and reducing the need to collect wild seaweed, which makes up only 3 percent of total production worldwide.

Seaweed can contribute to meeting at least nine of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, which aspire to end poverty, improve health and education, reduce inequality, fight climate change, build economic growth while preserving biodiversity. These include reducing poverty; achieving zero hunger; gender equality; decent work and economic growth; industry, innovation and infrastructure; responsible consumption and production; climate action; life below water and on land.

Environmentally, seaweed can provide a foundation for carbon storage, improve water quality by absorbing excess potentially detrimental nutrients (including nitrogen and phosphorus), offer a habitat for aquatic organisms, and prevent coastal erosion.

However, limitations exist due to a lack of availability of seaweed raw material and limited regulatory frameworks to delineate laws and policies for seaweed farming activities.

The report was presented to the World Bank constituency in March after a peer review. Its authors are currently responding and developing the report further.

Most important current challenges to sustainable expansion and intensification of seaweed farming at global level are inconsistent production and quality of raw material, climate change effects on crops (including environmental changes and higher prevalence of diseases and epiphytes), limited regulatory frameworks, deficient knowledge on efficient farming technologies and human capital, aging rural population, among others.

Limited human capital and aging rural populations are the most important challenges in some well-established farming regions and countries.

Related reading:

BLOG: Unlocking the potential of the seaweed sector for sustainable growth 

PRESS RELEASE: New Farmed Seaweed Markets Could Reach $11.8 Billion by 2030

REPORT: Global Seaweed New and Emerging Markets 2023

In regions where there are few livelihood alternatives to aquaculture, the exponential growth of the sector can lead to challenging environmental and social climates, curtailing economic opportunity for governments, businesses, entrepreneurs and employees.

Taking a strategic approach to help shape effective production in aquaculture – which runs the gamut from harvesting and breeding, to rearing fish, seaweed and other aquatic plants – helps set parameters to facilitate access to production and processing facilities, and domestic and international value chains.

Critical challenges include the need to seal gaps in supply and demand, and sustainably improve overall food security while accommodating the projected increase in demand for fish.

To help shape a framework for sustainable production in 10 African countries, the AquaInvest Platform, which is funded by the PROBLUE Trust Fund led by the World Bank Group is working with the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) Manufacturing, Agribusiness and Services Department to create a knowledge bank to better inform a framework for sustainable production and economic growth.

The partnership will work with Benin, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia to identify specific hurdles, shape plans, provide technical guidance, identify investment opportunities for IFC, and support governments in the creation of enabling environments for private sector investment, taxation and regulations.

Information will be gathered and produced on production, consumption, trade, aquaculture industry, commercial operations, genetics and hatcheries, aquafeed, farming operations, processing, sales and distribution, government industry oversight and policy.

Findings will be made available to farms and seafood operations to adopt methods for socially, environmentally and economically sustainable aquabusinesses.

Subsequent work in a similar vein will occur across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Seaweed is an economic and dietary mainstay in the Republic of Korea. The country ranks third in seaweed production after China and Indonesia and is building an export driven industry with a projected value of $750 million by 2024.

Worldwide, demand is increasing, and the compound annual growth rate of the seaweed market is projected to jump 9 percent between 2021 and 2028 to more than $23 billion.

As overall production and interest in seaweed for food and for use in various other applications grows, the South Korean government, through the Korea World Bank Partnership Facility, has made an agreement with the AquaInvest Platform, which is funded by the PROBLUE Trust Fund led by the World Bank, to finance a $900,000 research grant.

The goal of the grant is to support knowledge and technology transfer from the Republic of Korea to selected African and Southeast Asian countries to identify new markets, increase environmentally sustainable seaweed production, while reducing poverty, and generating employment opportunities in a traditionally woman-dominated employment sector.

Targeted countries and territorial regions may include the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Zanzibar and Tanzania, among others. In Tanzania, for example, where 80 percent of 25,000 seaweed farmers are women, many of them shut out of the overharvested local fisheries, poor water conditions and lack of seed stock have stagnated production.

AquaInvest – an initiative launched as part of the World Bank’s efforts to support expansion of the seaweed sector – will help shape private sector investment activities and promote public sector job creation in the target countries.

The grant is aligned with Food Systems 2030, a trust fund that supports countries to transform food systems and work toward the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly, no poverty (SDG1) and zero hunger (SDG2) by 2030.

To achieve these goals, the research grant will cover a landscape study to create an environment conducive to agribusiness, environmental and climate sustainability options. An international conference is also planned to support the development of an innovation network. Courses on seaweed farming technology and business will be offered in conjunction with on-site visits to South Korean research, production and processing facilities by African and Asian seaweed farming stakeholders. Stakeholders may include farmers, investors, policy makers and processors.

The country’s toolkit includes advanced cultivation technologies, which deploy breeding and hybridization technologies for seaweed.

A new aquaculture project in Kenya aims to improve local availability of tilapia, improving food security and reducing reliance on imported frozen fish, often of uncertain origin.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) and AquaInvest – which is funded by the PROBLUE Trust Fund led by the World Bank – will support local tilapia producer Victory Farms in accelerating sustainable production through a genetics research program. The IFC work will also target other aspects of the production chain, including nutrition, farming strategies, harvest, processing and marketing.

Headquartered in Homa Bay on the shores of Lake Victoria, the company uses commercial deep-water cages to raise tilapia, a fish native to northern Africa, which is now on the decline in the wild due to demand. Victory Farms controls the supply chain with a hatchery, nursery ponds, a processing plant and nationwide cold chain distribution. Most of the 1.5 million fish produced each month are sold to more than 12,000 women-owned micro-enterprises that in turn sell fried fish to thousands of low- and middle-income consumers.

Victory Farms aims to feed 2 billion people in Africa over the next 20 years.

IFC engaged Wageningen Livestock Research (WLR) in the Netherlands to create and manage a tilapia genetic improvement program to improve breeding and reduce the amount of time it takes for the fish to mature. This effort will support Victory Farms and boost competitiveness. Currently, tilapia in East Africa mature at 11 months, whereas in Asia, they mature in four to five months.

The Wageningen team will establish a database structure, protocols and templates to manage the program, training Victory Farms staff to participate on site, permanently improving genetic performance in each subsequent generation of tilapia. To protect

biodiversity, rather than using imported fish, local strains will be used because tilapias are native to Africa.

The company currently employs 1,450 people in Homa Bay and IFC projects this number will increase to 2,100 by the end of 2024. Victory Farms projects employees will number 5,700 by 2027 and 7,350 by 2032. As a result, further job creation is projected to occur in other sectors including transportation, logistics, feed production and the distribution chain.

Across the 10-island archipelago that forms Cabo Verde, arid landscapes dominate while verdant mountain ecosystems make up only 10 percent of terrain. Situated off the coast of Senegal in the Atlantic Ocean, the tiny African country has a total land mass of just over 4,000 square kilometers.

Tourism is the largest sector and agriculture contributes less than 10 percent of gross domestic product. About 35 percent of the population lives in poverty.

Already an exporter of processed and frozen fish, the Cabo Verde government aims to boost production to promote food security by expanding the country’s blue economy both on dryland and in its territorial waters, a 700,000 square kilometer maritime exclusive economic zone.

Supported by the AquaInvest Platform, funded by the PROBLUE Trust Fund led by the World Bank, over the next five to seven years, the plan involves building and enforcing a governance framework that takes an ecosystem approach to aquaculture while enhancing mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

With more than 46,000 people – roughly 10 percent of the population – affected by food insecurity, the aquaculture sector can make a significant contribution to poverty alleviation, boost food security and nutrition, and provide employment, while protecting aquatic habitats.

Representatives from AquaInvest, including World Bank Senior Fisheries Specialist Harrison Karisa, visited two aquaculture sites with Cabo Verde’s Resilient Tourism and Blue Economy Development Project in January to learn about conditions and conduct a scoping study.

While temperatures are suitable for fish growth, water quality and circulation are good, challenges include water depth, wave height and high energy costs. A short supply of feed,

seed, feed, brood stock, technology and equipment, while competition between tourism and fishery sectors also poses risks.

Regardless, spatial planning is underway to establish sustainable aquaculture facilities to generate supply for domestic consumption and for export. Plans include establishing the capacity to deliver technical training on hatcheries, production, processing, marketing, cold storage and supply chains. Regulatory planning, and building the structures for access to finance, and improving infrastructure and institutional capacity are also in the works.

Renewable energy produced by wind turbines and solar panels demonstrate strong potential to offer the solution for high energy costs. In Cabo Verde, a shrimp farm and a shrimp hatchery developed from imports of brood stock from Hawaii and on-farm fish feed production using locally sourced fish feed ingredients from the Moave feed mill exemplify how aquaculture potential can be fulfilled.

Building on an analysis of the current state of global aquaculture – valued at almost $300 billion in 2021 – the new Global Aquabusiness Investment Guide produced by the AquaInvest Platform, a project led by the World Bank with financing from the multi-donor trust fund PROBLUE, offers a strategic framework for public and private sector-led initiatives seeking to invest in the aquaculture sector.

The guide sheds light on the anatomy of value chains, small and medium enterprises, social and environmental practices. particularly in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and enterprises in developing countries.

“These new guidelines can help private and public sector aquabusiness stakeholders make responsible investments, stimulate new investments, nurture growth and expand the sector,” said Chris Brett, lead agribusiness specialist at the World Bank.

It details principles for sustainable aquaculture and aquabusiness development aligned with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the legally binding international Paris Agreement to keep global warming in check adopted by the United Nations. These include gender, social and environmental responsibility, capacity building and knowledge transfer, business planning process and market-driven development, harnessing natural strategic advantage, climate smart aquaculture and fish health and welfare.

In 2020, global fisheries and aquaculture production reached 214 million tonnes, comprising 178 million tonnes of aquatic animals and 36 million tons of algae, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The same year, global aquaculture production reached 122.6 million tonnes, that included aquatic animals (87.5 million tons) and algae (35.1 million tons).

With farmed rather than captured seafood the primary source for human consumption the aquaculture sector demonstrates a persistent and powerful growth trend.

“The guide fills a void, providing a global, consolidated practical and adaptable framework that can serve as a ‘go to’ reference document to inform decisions and strategies in aquabusiness development, especially for small and medium enterprises,” said Harrison Charo Karisa, senior fisheries specialist at the World Bank.  “Until now, there has been a paucity of publicly available information on sustainability benchmarks and metrics essential for investors and the creation of a stable and sustainable aquaculture sector.”

Reports on exemplary aquaculture sectors in Egypt, Lesotho, Norway, Seychelles, South Africa, Chile, Ecuador and Vietnam feature in the guide, shining a light on specific examples of successful initiatives.

The report is available here.