Subsaharan Africa is an enormously diverse region. To generalise about aquaculture development across this huge environmental and cultural expanse is virtually impossible. In addition, the available fish species, climatic and water fertilities are so varied as to make any such generalisations of limited use. Given this, the author trimed the huge diversity of possibilities and gave a highly personal assessment of priority research areas for Africa in a very narrow area of focus that could be valuable over the next ten years. This personal assessment is derived from research and development efforts ICLARM/GTZ are conducting in southern Malawi, where smallholder aquaculture is growing rapidly and is biased towards an assessment of research areas where I feel the probability of success may be high.