Crab Fattening - Reaping the Rewards of Tourism in Zanzibar, Tanzania

Zanzibar is a top holiday destination scattered with luxury hotels, but most of the communities living there are poor. VSO is working with local communities to ensure that they too can reap the rewards of tourism. Training in business skills has helped one rural women’s group take action and benefit from the islands tourism industry, by selling fattened crabs to top hotels.
A personal account

Sada Juma, chairwoman of Kisakasaka Women’s Group, tell us, “We buy small mud crabs from fishermen for 500 shillings. We keep the crabs in rearing pens close to the sea and we feed them on fish scraps every day. After about six weeks the crabs are big – they can weigh one or two kilos. Then they are ready to be sold to a hotel for up to 5000 shillings each.

It means we can send our children to school and buy food and medicine.

Having an income means we can get credit – we can buy school uniforms and books on credit knowing that in a few weeks we can pay the money back. That empowers us.

Crabs are popular with tourists and before, the hotels imported them from the mainland. We agreed that if we could give them a steady supply, they would buy from us. So when the crabs are ready we ring the hotel and take the crabs up to the main road by bicycle. The hotel manager meets us and buys all our stock.

We share the work. It is a long walk from our village to the crab pens but we have a rota so we take it in turns to go and feed the crabs. We meet every Tuesday to discuss our schedule, share problems and come up with solutions together. VSO has taught us democratic values and encouraged us to work more closely as a team, because that means we are in a stronger position to bargain with the hotels.”

Making markets work for the poor

Crab fattening is just one project the women are working on in order to diversify their means of income. They are also producing soap, rearing chickens and making ornaments for Zanzibar’s tourists. Before, they were dependent on their crops.

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