AIT congratulates Dr. Ram C. Bhujel, affiliated faculty member in the Aquaculture and Aquatic Resources Management (AARM) Field, whose proposal submitted under the EU-FP7 Programme has been selected for funding. The 36-month project titled Sustainable Aquaculture Research Networks in Sub-Saharan Africa (SARNISSA) will start in January 2008, and be coordinated by the University of Stirling, UK, with AARM-AIT as one of the key partners in the project. The total estimated budget of the project is 996,037 Euro.
Under the project, AARM-AIT will play a key role in producing the Aquaculture Compendium (AC) from the viewpoint of using Asian aquaculture, and it will look at the dissemination and its impacts thereafter. AARM-AIT will host and assist key African stakeholders to visit Asia, especially Aqua Outreach partners and also work in reviewing the impacts on final users of the case studies compiled in the AC, so that they can be taken forward as a template. As a leading post-graduate institute in Asia, AIT will play a key role from Asia to link with African research networks. It will also be responsible for the work plan for a study and subsequent state of the system report on governmental approaches, benefits and constraints to aquaculture development in the sub-region Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, in conjunction and comparison with similar studies carried out by the ETC Foundation (in The Netherlands) and WorldFish Center in Africa.