Community Engagement and Research

Our Community Partners

Currently we have two community partners. They have really been helpful in phase one of designing a suitable solution for fish farmers. These community partners include:

1. ProFish Ghana

2. Ashaiman Aquaculture Demonstration Centre

ProFish Ghana

We had a conversation with ProFish Ghana, our first community partner. Through that conversation, we gathered basic knowledge of the current fish farming practices employed in Ghana which includes liming the fish ponds before filling the pond with water and using experience to predict the current pH and temperature of the fish pond.

Ashaiman Aquaculture Demonstration Centre

We went for our first on-site visit to the Ashaiman Aquaculture Demonstration Centre on February 19, 2020. There, we met with our contact person, Mad. Joyce Buernoki Lutterodt who later introduced us to Mr Francis Adjei, the head of the organization. After the introductions, we started our research. Madam Joyce answered the questions we had prepared. These questions ranged from challenges faced in handling fish to the current measures taken to ensure the safety of fish. According to Madam Joyce, some fish farmers create greenhouses to regulate the temperature of water in the pond. However, during the rainy season, it is very difficult to control the temperature of the water and this leads to very high mortality of the fish. For regulating pH, a fish aerator is used. Sometimes, flushing water out of the fish pond and filling it with new water is better but it is time-consuming. Other measures are taken to make sure the water conditions including the temperature and the pH do not fluctuate uncontrollably. For instance, the fish farmers ensure that they do not overfeed the fish as doing that changes the pH of the water. Concrete tank experiences more pH change from feeding than earthen tanks because the food eventually dissolves in the soil for the earthen one but decays and remains in the water for concrete tanks.

Challenges Faced

Even though the Ashaiman Aquaculture Demonstration centre is under the Fishing Ministry of Ghana, it faces a lot of challenges which are not limited to transportation to the workplace, lack of funding to buy fishing implements and lack of a stable source of water. Currently, they use water from the Ashaiman Dam but that is not very reliable since all the farmers in the community depend on it as well. They also raised concerns about the organization being understaffed but according to them, that can be solved by getting a system that notifies them when the water conditions change so that the workers would not have to be physically present all the time.

Benefits of Interaction with Community Partner

Through communication with the community partners, we have expanded our scope of knowledge about the problem and the context of the problem as well. At the beginning of the project, we just had assumptions of what the real problem might be like using the information we found online. However, through the eyes of our community partners, we have nullified some of those assumptions because we have experienced firsthand what the real problem is. For instance, we had assumed that fish farmers will buy the sensor package to save their fish at all cost, however, our community partners made us understand that fish farmers already incur a lot of losses when procuring fish feed and other fishing implements, thus, it is very advisable to make the sensor package very affordable.

The Challenges we Faced

We faced a few challenges during our interaction with our community stakeholders. Transportation to the venue was a huge problem. We left school at 11 am and got to the venue at 2 pm. We picked 5 different vehicles just to get to the venue. All the vehicles took a lot of time to fill up with passengers before we could move. This wasted a lot of time we could have used for the research. Also, we got lost when we got to Ashaiman. The exact location of the Aquaculture Demonstration Centre was wrongly put in Google Maps. We wasted time going in circles till we finally found the right location from our contact person at the centre. In our next trips, we hope to use an Uber to address this issue.