SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Climate-Smart Food Systems
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1617119
This article is part of the Research TopicBeyond The Buzz: Monitoring Food Systems And Navigating Trade-Offs And Synergies For A Sustainable FutureView all articles
Small pelagic fish at the feed-food nexus in sub-Saharan Africa: a scoping review
Provisionally accepted
- 1Mountains of the Moon University, Fort Portal, Uganda
- 2Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, Greenwich, London, United Kingdom
- 3Ghent University, Ghent, East Flanders, Belgium
- 4WorldFish (Malaysia), Penang, Malaysia
- 5James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia
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Nourishing the growing and changing global population within sustainable limits is a pressing concern that must be addressed by 2030. To address this challenge, its argued food systems must transform, but a range of different food system configurations and trade-offs must be considered by national, regional and global decision-makers. Wild caught small pelagic fish are a valuable source of human nutrition and also are frequently processed into fish meal and fish oil to become the principal protein and lipid sources for farmed animal feeds. The choices between the primary (i.e., for direct human consumption) and secondary uses (i.e., for animal feed ingredients) of small-pelagic freshwater and marine fish provides an illustrative example of contention and opportunity in balancing livelihood, income, consumer demand and human nutrition needs. Whilst the potential trade-offs have received much popular attention, there is a clear need to examine the evidence. In this paper, we systematically collate peer reviewed literature and trade data from the Great Lakes Region and the Western coastal region of sub-Saharan Africa. A total of 201 articles met our search criteria, and of those we deemed 32 to hold sufficient and quality data for use in this review. The African Great Lakes Region (AGLR) (76%), and specifically Kenya (64%), were best represented in the literature which covered alternative feed proteins, assessment of feed/food nutritional quality and availability of feed/food resources. We find that the use Small Pelagic Fish Species (SPFS) as feed limits access for use as food. This further supports innovations to develop fish oil and fish meal alternatives to safeguard SPFS for direct human consumption, particularly in resource-poor contexts. Since most extracted evidence in this review was from the AGLR, there is still need for more targeted investments for robust research that is cross-regional to better understand the magnitude, dynamics and trade-offs concerning the utilization of SPFS in SSA.
Keywords: Fish meal, fish oil, Animal feeds, animal nutrition, Aquaculture, Capture fisheries, Human Nutrition, trade-off
Received: 23 Apr 2025; Accepted: 29 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wesana, Rodrigue, Bunting and Cohen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Joshua Wesana, Mountains of the Moon University, Fort Portal, Uganda
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