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A public education campaign targeting mainly middle school students in Nigeria is attracting teenagers to the aquaculture industry at an unprecedented rate.

Pressure on fish products is increasing in Nigeria, as in most other parts of Africa. As demand for fish increases among the growing population, the Nigerian government, as part of the West African Agricultural Productivity Program (WAAPP), has undertaken research and awareness-raising measures to transform aquaculture.

This included selecting schools and training interested students in basic fish farming techniques, in the hope of getting them interested in the fishing industry from an early age.

"For us in Nigeria, we believe that one of the sustainable ways to improve fish farming is to involve students and children when they are young," says Mabel Yarhere of the Lagos-based Federal Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research (NIOMR).

"It's best to change young people's mindset about everything, including fishing, while they're still young. So our model of helping young people is consistent with our ambition to make Nigeria self-sufficient in fish in the future," added Dr. Yarhere.

PPAAO Nigeria began the campaign in the country's schools in 2014 through four pilot schools. Although the Program has come to an end in Nigeria, the schools involved have retained an adapted fish farming component and, in some cases, set up a fishing club within the school.

In the economic capital, Lagos, Kings College, one of the country's oldest schools, has not only integrated fish farming into the curriculum, but also set up a dynamic club where students discuss fish-related activities.

"When I arrived at Kings College, I noticed that most students were interested in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Aware of the unemployment situation in Nigeria and the importance of diversifying one's skills, I opted for aquaculture. A trade in fishing could make all the difference when we join the job market in the future," says Omokanye Abdul Lateef, a^4th year student at Kings College.

Nigeria's efforts in favor of traditional aquaculture date back to 2014, when, inspired by the results of the OFAP school outreach programs, the then Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Akinwumi Adesina, (Editor's note, current President of the African Development Bank Group) with the support of the government integrated aquaculture into school curricula.

"What we can say is that thanks to the AOAPP, we have succeeded in introducing a culture of aquaculture into our school system, and this promises to be a game-changer for the fish industry in the future. To demonstrate the central role of youth engagement, NIOMR's current management has approved a similar outreach program in two schools in the 2019 budget," says Dr. Yarhere, also head of NIOMR's outreach program.

PPAAO funded NIOMR's awareness-raising activities. In addition to schools, PPAAO also visited three villages in Lagos State, where it trained selected community members in tilapia and catfish farming, as well as in various aquaculture practices. The PPAAO extension program used participatory approaches and, in collaboration with the target beneficiaries, decisions were taken to popularize the most suitable approaches and techniques within the communities.

"One of the main differences of the PPAAO approach is that we worked with the communities to determine which technologies they preferred. We didn't impose anything on the target communities. It was a Co-creation approach, and as a result, farmers chose technologies based on their environmental realities," explains Mercy Adeogun, an extension worker at the Federal College of Fisheries and Marine Technology in Lagos, who also helped disseminate PPAAO aquaculture technologies to beneficiaries in Nigeria.