Africa
From tobacco to tilapia
On the shores of Lake Kariba, a family business has been farming tilapia for 38 years BY WILLIAM LESCHEN
K
eith Nicholson woke at 4am after a stormy night. There had been lightning over Lake Kariba, the world’s largest man-made lake, and he was concerned the storm might have affected the trip gear of the three-phase pumps which pump lake water to the lei pond supplying the farm. Sure enough, one had tripped from a power surge. He was able to quickly restore it and begin his day cleaning screens and first-feeding the fish. It was an unusual start to the day on a farm he had started building back in 1983. Keith began working in 1976 in Harare as a buyer for the tobacco industry in what was then Rhodesia, and is now Zimbabwe. By the early 1980s the country was changing, and a number of his friends involved in agriculture were leaving for countries like South Africa and Australia. In 1981, after getting married, Keith and his wife travelled to Canada for an exploratory holiday where they found “a wonderful country” but – for Keith – it was far too cold to settle! While there, however, they visited a trout farm which started Keith thinking about possibilities back home. In those days there was very little commercial tilapia aquaculture in Zimbabwe or across southern Africa. It was a species he knew little about. Pursuing the idea, Keith was advised to start by looking to rent or buy plots on vacant government land on the shores of Lake Kariba, which borders Zimbabwe and Zambia. In early 1982 Keith travelled the 365km from Harare on his motorbike to view the undeveloped scrubland by the lakeside. He found an 11-hectare lake frontage plot at Chawara, with a further 3.2 hectares inland, which fitted the bill. Following a protracted bureaucratic process including multiple visits to government offices in Harare and to Kariba council, by June 1983 Keith received a “rights to purchase land for fish farming” on an initial four-year lease. The business was named “Kariba Bream Farm”, “bream” being the term widely used across southern Africa to refer to tilapia.
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