Aquaculture and Fish Welfare in Ghana

By Naveeth Basheer, Emmanuel Awuni @ 2026-02-02T14:27 (+13)

This report was produced by @Naveeth Basheer from AWASH and  @Emmanuel Awuni from SHARED Africa. The report is intended to support people working in the Effective Altruism and Animal Advocacy community, including:

• Funders: by identifying high-impact intervention areas and key evidence gaps.
• Practitioners and policymakers: by mapping sector dynamics and regulatory frameworks.

• Researchers: by highlighting priority topics for further investigation and data collection.

   

The executive summary is included below, and you can read the full report here: link

Executive Summary

This report provides an evidence-based assessment of fish welfare in Ghana’s aquaculture sector, with a primary focus on Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) cage farming on Lake Volta. Building on Animal Ask’s Farm Animal Welfare in Ghana (2024), it integrates recent data and local stakeholder perspectives to identify welfare challenges and practical opportunities for improvement, that are scientifically grounded and locally feasible.

Context

Ghana’s aquaculture sector has expanded rapidly since 1990, and is now the fastest-growing in Africa. Cage farming on Lake Volta accounts for around 90% of farmed fish production, and tilapia represents 80–95% of total output, making it the species of greatest welfare relevance. While growth has improved domestic fish supply and livelihoods, it has also intensified welfare risks linked to water quality, disease, and management practices. Regulatory oversight has not kept pace with sector expansion, and fish welfare is not explicitly addressed in current legislation.

Key welfare challenges

Fish welfare conditions in Ghana are shaped by environmental, biological, and institutional factors.

Water quality in Lake Volta often falls below welfare-relevant thresholds. Pollution from illegal mining, agricultural runoff, and waste disposal continues to degrade conditions. While farmers have limited control over lake-wide pressures, poor water quality remains a chronic welfare stressor.

Disease has been a major welfare challenge in recent years. The 2018 outbreak of Infectious Spleen and Kidney Necrosis Virus (ISKNV) caused catastrophic mortalities of up to 90% on some farms, driving many producers out of business. ISKNV remains endemic, often alongside other bacterial infections such as Streptococcus agalactiae. Weak biosecurity, fish movement between sites, and limited regulatory oversight contributed to the scale and persistence of losses. Disease prevention and biosecurity therefore emerge as foundational to welfare improvement.

Hatcheries represent a critical but under-addressed welfare bottleneck. Survival rates in hatcheries are typically 40–70%, substantially lower than 80-90% in grow-out systems. Poor broodstock management, inadequate disinfection and quarantine, and early exposure to pathogens enable welfare problems to propagate throughout the production chain.

Policy and enforcement

Ghana currently lacks an explicit legal framework for fish welfare. Existing laws and policies focus primarily on health, disease, food safety, sustainability, and productivity, with welfare considerations remaining implicit and secondary. The main statutory protection for animals, the prohibition of “unnecessary cruelty” in the Criminal Code, only provides a nominal safeguard and does not function as an operational welfare standard in food production systems.

No legislation defines welfare standards for farmed fish or mandates humane handling, transport, or slaughter. However, several policies offer opportunities to integrate welfare standards indirectly, particularly where welfare aligns with health, biosecurity, productivity, and sustainability. In particular, the Fisheries and Aquaculture Act (2025), Ghana National Aquaculture Development Plan (2024–2028) and the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (2024-2027) offer potentially influential entry points for embedding welfare standards without new primary legislation. Other regulations governing aquaculture operations and licensing also provide scope for introducing measurable welfare requirements, such as stocking density limits or water-quality thresholds.

Enforcement of fisheries and aquaculture policy is led by the Fisheries Commission. Capacity constraints limit inspection coverage, but the existing enforcement architecture is compatible with welfare regulation. If explicit welfare standards were introduced, they could be enforced through existing licensing, inspection, and compliance mechanisms. Overall, Ghana’s policy environment does not yet prioritise fish welfare, but it provides credible institutional pathways for introducing and enforcing welfare standards if these are aligned with current sector priorities.

Lessons from past interventions

• Disease prevention is likely to be a key element of welfare improvements in Ghana. Proactive biosecurity and diagnostics are more effective than reactive treatment.
• Science must connect to practice - technical innovations must be translated into accessible, context‑specific farmer tools.
• Government capacity exists for national-scale interventions, provided the cause is considered significant enough.
• Communication and transparency ensure collective learning. Unpublished or inaccessible research limits welfare progress.
• Farmer‑led approaches yield more durable improvements than top‑down interventions.
• Institutional capacity‑building in training, laboratories, and policy implementation underpins long‑term welfare resilience.

Opportunities for impact

Despite these challenges, Ghana’s aquaculture sector presents favourable conditions for welfare improvement. Production is concentrated among a relatively small number of large farms, scientific knowledge on tilapia welfare is well established, and many welfare improvements align closely with farm profitability through reduced mortality, improved growth, and lower feed costs. The government has shown that it can implement national aquaculture health initiatives when it is incentivised to do so, as shown by the ISKNV vaccination program. Critically, due to high mortality events recently, farmers will likely be more open to new solutions.

Recommendations for Future Interventions

Farmer‑Focused Interventions

• Reducing Stocking Density: A potentially high-impact intervention requiring no capital investment and entirely within farmer control. Optimal densities improve welfare, water quality, disease resistance, growth rates, and feed efficiency. Strong alignment between welfare and profitability makes this particularly promising.
• Improving Hatchery Mortality: With survival rates of 40-70% in Ghana versus 80-90% achievable elsewhere, substantial improvement may be possible. Enhanced biosecurity, water management, and health protocols could significantly reduce early-life suffering. Given the far greater number of juvenile fish and disease transmission risks, hatchery interventions may achieve an outsized impact. Improved survival would likely reduce overall fish numbers farmed as cost-conscious producers optimise operations rather than expand output.
• Improving Water Quality: While lake-wide pollution limits what individual farmers can control, practical on-farm measures, including regular cage cleaning, aeration, and adjusted feeding practices, could meaningfully improve local conditions and welfare outcomes.

Policy Interventions

• Establishing a National Aquatic Animal Welfare Standard: A potentially high-impact intervention that would create a sector-wide regulatory baseline for fish welfare. Ghana currently lacks explicit welfare standards for aquaculture, meaning outcomes depend on variable farmer practices. A national standard could set minimum requirements across production stages, signal government commitment, and support consistent welfare improvement when phased and aligned with existing policy priorities.
• Regulating Stocking Density and Handling Practices: Introducing system- and species-specific density limits could reduce chronic welfare risks linked to overcrowding, stress, and disease. While optimal densities vary, upper limits combined with water quality and health monitoring can meaningfully mitigate welfare harms without requiring precise optimisation.
• Introducing Humane Harvest and Killing Requirements: Current slaughter practices commonly involve prolonged suffering. Requiring humane stunning and slaughter methods would address a clear welfare gap and improve alignment with international standards, with additional benefits for product quality and market access.
• Strengthening Water Quality Monitoring: Mandatory water quality monitoring and reporting could prevent both acute mortality events and long-term welfare deterioration, given water quality’s central role in fish health, stress, and survival throughout the production cycle.

Conclusion

Ghana's concentrated aquaculture sector, with most production from a small number of farms, presents unusual leverage for welfare interventions. The combination of well-documented welfare challenges, established scientific knowledge about tilapia welfare requirements, demonstrated farmer receptiveness to practical training, and alignment between welfare improvements and farm profitability creates favorable conditions for impact.

Disease prevention, improved hatchery management, and optimized stocking densities emerge as the most promising intervention areas, particularly when designed to deliver both welfare and economic benefits. Success will depend on farmer-centered approaches, strong stakeholder collaboration, transparent knowledge sharing, and sustained engagement beyond initial project timelines.

The recent passage of a consolidated Fisheries and Aquaculture Act creates a timely opportunity to integrate welfare standards into Ghana’s evolving regulatory framework, particularly through subsidiary regulations and implementation plans.