Botswana's leading commercial fish producer forges ahead

Mari van Graan and her husband, Pieter, operate a commercial fish farming project in Kasane in northern Botswana, one of very few commercial aquaculture projects in the country. Tshiamo Tabane reports on how the Van Graans built up their company, Golden Wrap, which also produces fruit, maize and vegetables.

- Tshiamo Tabane

As a landlocked and semi-arid country, Botswana has every reason to seek creative ways of diversifying and boosting food production to ensure food security.

Golden Wrap, a farming enterprise based in Kasane in Chobe District in the north of the country, is a good example of the diversification the government hopes to see replicated across the sector. The company produces fish, as well as fruit, maize and vegetables.

The fish farm was launched by Mari van Graan and her husband Pieter, and began production in 2016. The following year, the business attracted investment from Danish African Development, Chobe Holdings Limited and Jonathan Gibson, and together the shareholders established the trading company Golden Wrap (Pty) Ltd.

This has since become a model aquaculture business in a country with only a handful of these projects.

According to Van Graan, their company, which produces and sells fish through its Chobe Bream Aquaculture Fish Farm, focuses on delivering the highest-quality product. Two species are currently under production on the farm: the three spotted tilapia (Oreochromis andersonii) and the Nile tilapia (O. niloticus).

The company also taps into the opportunities presented by the many tourists who visit the region, which is home to world famous wildlife sanctuaries such as Chobe National Park.

"When we arrived here in 2014, there was absolutely nothing," recalls Van Graan. "We were the first commercial fish project to be established here. People didn’t know what aquaculture was about, so there was a lot of bureaucracy and many challenges. But through patience, hard work and good management, we managed to establish a profitable fish-farming project.”

In addition to the fish, they produce avocados, lemons, limes, papayas, bananas, watermelons and naartjies.