Nile Perch Marketing Tanzania Gibbon Danish Institute for International Studies Publications from the former Centre for Development Research Of Saviours and Punks: The political economy of the Nile perch marketing chain in Tanzania CDR Working Paper 97.3, June, 1997 Peter Gibbon Email your order for a paper copy to DIIS order form Contents Abstract 1. Introduction 2. The International Setting 3. The Local Setting 4. Nile Perch and the National Economy 5. The Marketing Chain 6. Intersecting Chains 7. Actors, Actresses and Strategies 8. Earnings and Profits 9. Conclusion References Top of this page Abstract The paper is a fieldwork-based case study of the 'commodity chain' for the Nile Perch fish from Lake Victoria, Tanzania. This fish first began apperaring in significant numbers in the lake in the early 1980s and within a few years a large 'artisanal' fishery developed around it. 'Commodity chain' analysis focuses on how a commodity is produced, marketed, distributed and consumed, which groups are involved in each of these http://www.diis.dk/graphics/CDR_Publications/cdr_publications/working_papers/wp-97-3.htm (1 of 95) [2/28/2008 4:43:00 PM] Nile Perch Marketing Tanzania Gibbon stages, how they are organised and how they interrelate. The aim is to identify principles of market structure and organisation and the basic pattern of distribution of earnings and profits. The paper traces the restructuring of the market for Nile Perch especially after the opening of the first industrial processing plants on the lake in 1990. It links this analysis to issues concerning the social and economic characteristics of marketing chains in marginal economies, and to ones concerning the sustainability of economic growth based on unregulated natural resource extraction. Top of this page 1 Introduction The Nile Perch is a fatty white fish found apparently exclusively in freshwater lakes in central and eastern Africa, overwhelmingly in Lake Victoria. Although neither especially tasty nor accessible to international markets, probably 40,000 ton of Nile Perch frozen or chilled fillet was being processed at upwards of 30 factories around the lake and exported to developed country markets by the mid- 1990s. Some thousands of tons of salt dried Nile Perch were also being processed 'artisanally' and exported to neighbouring countries, principally Zaire, while within the three countries bordering the lake there were further significant domestic trades in chilled, whole frozen, salt dried, smoked, and fried Nile Perch and in the remains of the fish. In Tanzania since the second half of the 1980s, when a significant 'artisanal' fishery for Nile Perch first emerged, the fish has often been nicknamed mkombozi (saviour). The fish's emergence and capacity to penetrate ever wider markets reversed the apparently intractable decline of the fishing industry in a region already suffering from falling production of its other staple, cotton. By the mid- 1990s, thousands of young men had found employment as fishermen and, while the main beneficiaries were obviously the owners of the processing plants, some local vessel-owners were accumulating on a previously undreamt-of scale. This whole process occurred overwhelm ingly as a result of the spontaneous working out of different types of 'market forces', and with only minimal state involvement. At the same time, important questions began to be raised locally, both about the outcomes and the sustainability of this chain of development. In particular, public discussion was being broached about its relation to local diet and food security, about the relative distribution of returns between the main groups of actors (including the Tanzanian state itself) and about its physical sustainability. The number of processing plants in Kenya had already fallen from a maximum of 15 to 11 in the wake of declining catches (E. Jansen, personal communication), and the first reports of declining unit catches in the Tanzanian section or the lake date from 1994. Most of these questions feed into international debates on the same subjects, as well as into more abstract debates concerning the long-term sustainability of economic growth based on 'free' markets, especially when economic growth rests on a boom in the extraction of natural resources. http://www.diis.dk/graphics/CDR_Publications/cdr_publications/working_papers/wp-97-3.htm (2 of 95) [2/28/2008 4:43:00 PM] Nile Perch Marketing Tanzania Gibbon This paper examines these questions, but in the course of addressing a somewhat different general focus, namely what the Nile Perch production and marketing systems in Tanzania, and their international extensions, tell us about the economic and social characteristics of spontaneously emerging marketing chains and private enterprise generally in deregulated but still predominantly marginalised economies. The main conceptual framework adopted here is derived from recent studies of global and national commodity chains by, amongst others, Gereffi (1994), Harriss-White (1995) and Bernstein (1996). In these studies, commodity chains are analysed with respect to sequences of production and circulation in 'core' and related chains, the divisions of labour accompanying them, the distribution of earnings and profits they entail, and the forms of social and economic power through which market power is organised to perpetuate or subvert their distribution. In this paper, the latter are approached as an outcome of the interaction between a given set of wider social and economic structures on the one hand, and strategies employed by specific groups of actors and actresses in the marketing chain on the other. A secondary framework will also be used for discussing the relation of the Nile Perch chain to more general processes in the current world economy. This framework arises out of elements of the recent critiques of 'globalisation theory' by Ruigrok and van Tulder (1995) and Hirst and Thompson (1996). The study of the Nile Perch chain is part of a wider project of the author to examine emergent marketing chains in port-liberalisation Tanzania. Besides Nile Perch, studies were also undertaken of the prawn and dagaa fishery chains during a 6-month period of fieldwork between November 1995 and April 1996. A study of the cotton sector, which unlike fisheries was very highly regulated, and where also investment pay back periods are likely to be much longer, is planned for July-October 1997. The Nile Perch study involved exactly 100 extended interviews carried out around Lake Victoria and at markets in Tabora, Sivgida, Dodoma, Dar es Salaam and London. Interviewees comprisedfishermen, traders of various kinds, artisanal processors, matajiri (proprietors of boats and other fishing equipment), transporters, trawler operators and crew, factory owners, managers and workers, and government staff and offices. With exception of the last of these categories, interviews followed the lines of individual or corporate 'business histories', using check-lists inspired by that found in the appendix to Harriss-White (1995). Over a dozen different check-lists were used, tailored to different roles in the chain. Interviewees were chosen on the basis of membership of a given division of labour category or sub-category in the chain and of availability, in collaboration with research assistants with extensive prior knowledge of the local fisheries. Interviews were usually held in Kiswahili with questions and answers translated from and back into English. Interviewees were told that I was working on a background study of private business in Tanzania, sponsored by DANIDA as part of its preparations for redirecting some of its assistance from government to the private sector. They were told also that the study did not involve making recommendations for support either to the fisheries sector in general nor to any individual or company within it. [ The main research assistant for this study was R Mhekele. Additional assistance was provided by F. Matimbo (Dar es Salaam), L Mkwizu (Dodoma, Singida, Tabora) and M Medad (Mwanza). The author would also like to acknowledge the assistance of E Jansen and C Sørensen in sharing with me information from related studies in progress. Lis Bluhme (CDR) typed the first draft of this paper. Many thanks to all those mentioned.] The paper opens with a sketch of the local physical and socio-economic settings which form backdrops to the development of the chain. This is followed by a discussion of the trade's macro-economic significance. Subsequently the paper turns to a description of the division of labour within the chain, and for the commodities intersecting with it either as inputs, services or goods produced and http://www.diis.dk/graphics/CDR_Publications/cdr_publications/working_papers/wp-97-3.htm (3 of 95) [2/28/2008 4:43:00 PM] Nile Perch Marketing Tanzania Gibbon sold together with Nile Perch. Next comes a discussion of the social character of the actors and actresses in the chain and of the strategies and structures through which they interact. This is supplemented by information on earnings and profits in some branches of the chain. In conclusion, the paper turns to general questions concerning the production and contract form in African fisheries, market power and development, enterprise development and accumulation, and the emergent relation of Tanzania to the 'new' international division of labour. Top of this page 2 The International Setting 2.1The International Economy In the 1970s several European commentators (notably Frobel et al., 1977) developed the concept of 'New International Division of Labour': This basically denoted a postulated tendency for large-scale firms in the developed countries to export the greater part of their production to less developed countries, principally in order to take advantage of lower local labour costs. On theother hand, the home countries of these large firms were to remain centres for the now-international enterprises' strategic direction (facilitated by advances in communication and transport technology), research and development and global marketing functions. The actual degree of realisation of this postulated tendency even during the 1970s itself is unclear.