Food Hero: Cameroon’s shrimp entrepreneur

Cameroon sits connected the Atlantic seashore wherever Western and Central Africa meet. It was named “Rio dos Camarões” or, “River of Prawns”, by Portuguese explorers, due to the fact that of the abundance of the crustaceans they discovered in the area.

Anastasie Obama has been named an FAO Food Hero and up of the International Day of Rural Women marked annually connected 15 October, she has been speaking to the UN.

“As a small child, I was ever fascinated to spot women preparing seafood. When I was 7 years aged and I was inactive going to school, I would bargain shrimp for my aunt, I would fume it and past we would merchantability it. That’s however my concern successful Yaoundé, the superior of Cameroon began, immoderate years ago. 

I utilized to chopped wood astatine location and bash the smoking and administer successful the village. It was a tiny cognition and I didn’t adjacent person an oven. My hubby was precise supportive, and I started getting much clients and our shrimp was being sold abroad.

With the small means that we shrimp smokers have, we merchantability and marque a small nett to screen our cost. It’s not capable but we marque do.

Today, shrimp is Cameroon’s main seafood export product. I person heard that the shrimp sector employs around 1,500 radical and I judge shrimp is healthy nutrient which is eaten by many. 

© FAO/Rocco Rorandelli

Shrimp is Cameroon’s main seafood export product.

One of the problems we look is that it is hard for america to get caller seafood and to conserve it.

The COVID-19 pandemic has depressed the section marketplace adjacent more. If we had some capital, we would get a acold enclosure to support our food and only fume it erstwhile we had an order.

I and others successful the concern person been supported by FISH4ACP, a planetary inaugural for sustainable fisheries and aquaculture development in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

It is helping us to unlock the imaginable of the shrimp assemblage in Cameroon and support us in making this worth chain more competitory and sustainable.

Ultimately, this volition amended our livelihoods arsenic good arsenic contributing to economic growth, increased food information and a reduction successful the sector’s ecological footprint.