Abstract:
The fishery science in Ethiopia is at infant stage and its value chain is not such studied in the
country. This study was aimed at analysis of fish value chain in Gilgel Gibe dam I reservoir
Southwest of Ethiopia with specific objectives of mapping fish value chain and identify the
major actors, investigating the fish market channels and performance, analyzing the
determinants of value addition on fish by the producers and analyzing the determinants of fish
supply to the market. A three stage sampling procedure which includes both purposive and
random sampling were used to select sample respondents. Primary data were collected from
128 randomly selected individuals’ interview using structured questionnaire via enumerators
and secondary data were acquired from published and unpublished sources. Descriptive
statistics and econometric analysis were used to analyze the data. The result of value chain
analysis shows that the direct fish value chain actors of this study area are fishermen, local
collectors, fishery cooperatives, whole sellers, retailer and restaurants and hotels while the
major enablers are WoA, and WA, NGO’s, BoA, MFI research center and Jimma university.
The fish marketing channels and performance analysis result shows 196,885 kg of fish were
produced by the respondent which is 79% passed through twelve main alternative marketing
channels and 16.4 % was consumed by producer. The result of GMM shows the producer get
the higher margin (at channel II and XII which is 75% and 73.7%) when they sell to
cooperatives and collectors and in general restaurants and hotels get the highest margin in
this fish value chain(i.e. 142-146%). The result of binary logit model indicated that the fish
value addition is significantly affected by education level, fishing equipment, extension
service, access to market information and credit service. The multiple linear regression model
results also indicated that volume of fish supply is positively and significantly affected by
fishing experience, price of fish in 2015, producer membership to fishery cooperative and
access to credit service. Therefore; it needs strong government intervention on supporting
fishermen in providing modern input and technologies, processing and value addition,
empowering fishery cooperatives, strengthening of market extension and linking them with
financial service provider and improving extension system are recommended to accelerate the
fishery value chain’s development thus income of individual fishermen could be enhanced
