00:00A high-rise for fish.
00:04About 10,000 tilapia live in the eight vertical tanks.
00:09The youngest ones live on the very top storey.
00:11The older ones live lower down where they can be easily fished out.
00:18Jack Oyugi came up with the idea of building a vertical fish farm in Ongata Rungai,
00:23southwest of Nairobi, and already has lots of local customers.
00:30It was a risky venture. Many small fish farms have already gone bust in this arid region.
00:39When I came here and I decided to do my vertical purchase systems here,
00:43people were asking the same questions, are you able to succeed?
00:46I even went around and talked to people that had tried before, just like having fishpots around,
00:50and I realized that almost like 100% of those fishpots had dried up because of lack of water.
00:56To make sure his tanks didn't dry out, he took his cues from nature.
01:01The system is designed to mimic how a natural lake works,
01:05right down to aeration and algae formation, with towers of interconnected tanks.
01:10Water flows through biofiltration and recycling systems, creating a closed-loop aquatic environment.
01:18So we understood how the lake operates, for example.
01:22You will find that the lake itself has what we call a cleaning mechanism,
01:26whereby all wastes are removed through how the lake operates,
01:30and also digested by microorganisms.
01:32So we were now asking ourselves why can we replicate what's happening outside the lake to where we need it.
01:39Jack Oyugi is revolutionizing fish farming in arid areas.
01:44His farm runs off solar power and recycles up to 95% of the water.
01:51Plus, fish waste is collected at the bottom of the tanks and is then converted into bio-fertilizer.
01:59That's the most lucrative part of the entire operation.
02:05Besides the fish, we wanted to make farming more sustainable,
02:08and the cost of feeds was the most expensive expense we had.
02:13So for us to be able to make our farming sustainable,
02:16we decided to add value to the fish bio-waste that we were collecting from the system.
02:22Some Kenyan farmers, like Robert Rengera, have switched back to organic fertilizers,
02:27over concerns that synthetic ones could harm the soil in the long run.
02:34Wendy Cinthia regularly visits farmers in Meru who are using their organic fertilizer.
02:41The organic fertilizer is a bit costly, but it has a lot of benefits.
02:45It gives us farmers the hope of a good harvest, and that is beneficial for us.
02:53Farmers often turn to aquaculture for a second stream of income.
02:57In Kenya, the demand for fish is high.
02:59According to a 2024 report by Kenya Fisheries Service,
03:03the country produced well under half of the country's projected demand of 510,000 metric tons of fish a year.
03:11But experts believe Kenya can move towards self-sufficiency in fish production, and that could be vital.
03:17Fish can play a very important role in enhancing food security, especially in those areas,
03:23arrend and semi-arrend areas.
03:25This is by providing a resilient source of nutritious food, income and livelihoods,
03:32where conventional agriculture is limited by water scarcity and ash climatic conditions in Kenya.
03:40In places like this, farmers have to be innovative to be able to fish farm at all.
03:45A hundred and sixty kilometers from Nairobi in eastern Kenya,
03:49Joel Nambuki started off growing mangoes at his farm in Watay Makueni County.
03:53Now he also supplies young fish, or fingerlings, to fish farmers across Kenya.
04:03The area is not connected to the national power grid,
04:06and the dry climate poses challenges because of seasonal water scarcity,
04:10so the farmer built big water ponds.
04:13The farm dam is able to hold a million liters.
04:16That is able to sustain us from one season to the next season of rain.
04:22Basically because in Kambani or this part, we always have two seasons.
04:27The water in the fish ponds gets recycled to conserve it.
04:32It's pumped into other tanks with solar energy,
04:35and then cleaned with the help of microorganisms.
04:41Makueni is an arid and semi-arid area.
04:44So our farmers, sometimes when they were using the earth ponds,
04:50we realized farmers are using a lot of water to produce fish.
04:55Then it later came the idea of the recycling system.
05:00With its recycling system, the farm is able to produce about 300,000 fingerlings a year.
05:05And every three to four months, the wastewater from the ponds is diverted into the organic garden nearby,
05:12fertilizing it with nutrients.
05:16Sustainable pond farming and vertical farming,
05:19these two innovations are reshaping fish farming and the entire agricultural sector in Kenya's driest regions.
05:29When I met Jack, the innovator, you know, the guy behind the vertical lake fish setup, you know,
05:36him being able to produce around 10,000 fish on a very small piece of land, you know,
05:41it is sort of, I learned so much that with the right innovation, with the right mindset, you know, there
05:46are so many possibilities.
05:47You know, and he told me that if I wanted to have a similar setup, you know, for home consumption,
05:53where I could raise maybe 200 or 300 fish, I could get the same setup for less than $500.
06:00You know, where I could even use minimal water, you know, I don't need to have a huge lake or
06:07dam like this one.
06:07So it was very inspiring for me.
06:09So it was very inspiring for me.
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