About the Uganda Aquaculture Census 2025
Uganda's first census of aquaculture farms, conducted by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF). Reference period July 2024 – June 2025.
What is aquaculture?
Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, molluscs and plants under controlled or semi-controlled conditions. The Uganda Aquaculture Census (UAC) 2025 focused on fish farming.
Globally, aquaculture is one of the fastest-growing food-producing sectors. According to the FAO's State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (2024), farmed aquatic animals reached 94 million tonnes in 2022, or 51 percent of total fisheries production, overtaking capture fisheries for the first time.
In Uganda, fishing (capture fisheries and aquaculture together) contributed 2.0 percent of Gross Domestic Product and 7.8 percent of agricultural GDP in the 2024/25 financial year. The sector provides livelihoods to many communities, yet until this census there was little structural data on the number of farms, the production methods used and the volumes produced.
Why the census was conducted
The UAC 2025 is the first aquaculture census in Uganda. It was undertaken by the Government of Uganda through UBOS to provide comprehensive information on the structure of the sector and its production levels, as a basis for planning, decision-making and monitoring. It supports the Fourth National Development Plan (NDP IV) and its goal of evidence-based decision-making for industrialisation and inclusive growth.
The specific objectives were to:
- Establish the number of aquaculture farms in the country.
- Establish the number of farms with aquaculture facilities.
- Establish the production methods used.
- Obtain data on production by species.
- Obtain data on access to aquaculture extension services.
The census was conducted under the Uganda Bureau of Statistics Act, 1998 (CAP 333). The Act guarantees the confidentiality of the information collected, and all field officers swore an Oath of Secrecy before enumeration.
How the census was conducted
Scope and design
- A complete enumeration: every aquaculture farm in the country was visited, in all 135 districts and 11 cities.
- The statistical unit was the aquaculture farm. A farm was included if it stocked fish during the reference period.
- The reference period was July 2024 – June 2025, a 12-month cycle in which a farmer can grow fish to maturity.
- The farm list was built from the 2024 National Population and Housing Census, supplemented with administrative aquaculture registers.
- Both water-based farms (cages in lakes and other permanent water bodies) and land-based farms (ponds, tanks, dams, rice fields) were covered.
Fieldwork
- Data was collected in May and June 2025 by 283 trained enumerators, guided to each farm by District Fisheries Officers.
- Interviews were face-to-face with the most knowledgeable person at the farm, using tablets with a Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) application.
- The location of each farm was recorded by GPS, and the area of land-based facilities was measured on site.
- Completed interviews were sent to UBOS in real time and monitored daily from a situation room, with built-in validation rules to catch errors in the field.
- A post-enumeration validation of 292 farms in February 2026 found a net coverage of 99.9 percent.
Topics covered
Farm characteristics; production methods; farm labour; production and sales; fish species; feeds and other inputs; extension services; hatchery production; machinery and equipment; and aquaculture and climate change.
Key findings
Farms
- The census found 9,463 aquaculture farms, 67.7 percent of them in rural areas.
- 97.1 percent of farms practised grow-out only, 2.1 percent ran both a hatchery and grow-out, and 0.8 percent were hatcheries only.
- Tilapia, catfish and mirror carp were the main species: 80.5 percent of farms cultured tilapia, 48.7 percent catfish and 2.5 percent mirror carp.
Production methods
- Ponds were used by 92.3 percent of farms, cages by 4.5 percent and tanks by 2.1 percent. Others used dams or reservoirs, rice-cum-fish and aquaponics.
- There were 24,348 ponds (70.3 percent stocked, mostly rural), 3,135 cages (58.3 percent stocked, mostly urban) and 699 tanks (71.1 percent stocked, mostly urban).
Production and disposition
- Total production was 65,444 metric tonnes over the reference period, of which 71.9 percent came from farms in urban areas.
- Tilapia made up 82.4 percent of production, catfish 17.3 percent and mirror carp 0.2 percent.
- Nearly eight in ten farms produced mainly for sale. Of the fish produced, 87.8 percent was sold, 10.2 percent consumed by the farmer, 1.6 percent processed and 0.4 percent lost.
Extension services
- 53.3 percent of farms received extension services, with no significant difference between rural and urban farms.
Key terms
- Aquaculture farm (holding)
- An economic unit of aquaculture production under single management, whether run by a household or by an institution, company, cooperative or farmer group.
- Grow-out farm
- A facility where fish seed are raised to market size.
- Hatchery
- A facility for breeding, hatching and raising the early stages of fish before they go to nurseries or grow-out farms.
- Fish seed
- Young fish used for stocking: fry (newly hatched, under 5 g) and fingerlings (3 to 15 cm, ready for stocking into grow-out systems).
- Monoculture and polyculture
- Farming a single species in a production unit, or two or more complementary species together.
- Water-based and land-based methods
- Water-based methods, such as cages, are practised inside a permanent water body. Land-based methods include ponds, tanks, raceways, dams and rice fields.
About this dashboard
This dashboard presents the statistics published in the Uganda Aquaculture Census 2025 Report. All 53 tables in the report are reproduced as printed in Report Tables, and the charts and maps on the other pages are drawn from them. Figures are shown for Uganda as a whole, by rural and urban location, by the 17 statistical sub-regions, by Zonal Agricultural Research and Development Institute (ZARDI) zones, and by district. Figures below district level were not published.
Download the full report (PDF) www.ubos.org
Enquiries: Uganda Bureau of Statistics, Plot 9 Colville Street, P.O. Box 7186, Kampala. Tel. (256-414) 706000, email ubos@ubos.org.