In Bangladesh, the aquaculture production has grown rapidly with the production of fish from aquaculture in 2017-2018 being 24.5 lakh MT, accounting for 56% of total fish production. Within the aquaculture sector, the production of tilapia has grown rapidly from 15,000 MT in 2006-2007 to, 3.85 lakh MT in 2017-2018. It has been projected that in 2030, the total aquaculture production of the country could potentially reach to 80 lakh MT with the production of tilapia being 10 lakh MT.

The major constraints in the promotion of aquaculture are the increased cost of feed and other inputs, resulting in a poor profit margin for farmers. This is compounded by greater dependencies of farmers on the use of commercial feed, poor quality feed, poor water quality and greater interest of farmers to produce large size fish requiring longer production cycles of up to 8-12 months. In order to overcome some of these problems WorldFish, with local partners, and in collaboration with Department of Fisheries (DoF) and Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI) has implemented a project on “Tilapia value chains for the poor: testing sustainable practices to meet ‘bottom of the pyramid’ demand” - The ‘Aquaculture for Low Income Consumers (AquaLINC)' Project. Funded by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)/ Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) this project is implementing in Bangladesh and Egypt from January 2016 to September 2019. Over the period by conducting several on-station, on-farm research on technologies, households surveys and market value chain studies the Aqualinc Project has developed economically viable approaches to increase access to tilapia by the poor while maintaining profitability using innovative production systems.

To disseminate the lessons learned from the project to the stakeholders working on tilapia value chain, WorldFish is organizing two-day long Final Workshop of the AquaLINC Project on 15-16 September 2019 at Dhaka, Bangladesh. In the workshop, in addition to participants from Bangladesh, the colleagues from Egypt will be participating as well. The Workshop will be inaugurated by the Hon’ble Minister, Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock (MoFL), Government of Bangladesh who will present as the Chief Guest. The Secretary of MoFL will be the Special Guest, the Director-General, DoF and Director General, BFRI will be the Guest of Honor.