Technical Efficiency and Small-scale Fishing Households in Tanzanian coastal Villages: An Empirical Analysis

The effort to conserve fisheries resources and improve the welfare of small-scale fishing households is an important objective of Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) in Tanzania. The success of such strategies depends both on the variation and the level of efficiency within small-scale fishing households. This paper examines the technical efficiency of small-scale fishing households in Tanzania using data from two coastal villages (Mlingotini and Nyamanzi). A stochastic frontier (with technical inefficiency effects) model is specified and estimated. The estimated mean technical efficiency of small-scale fishing households is 52%. Results show that the efficiency of individual fishing households is positively associated with fishing experience, size of farming land, distance to the fishing ground, and potential market integration and negatively related to non-farm employment and bigger household sizes. We find that future policies aiming at targeting conservation-development issues in fishing communities should be concerted to provide mechanisms, which improve the access of small-scale fishing households to less destructive fishing tools via provision of credits, and markets as well as the creation of new employment opportunities in other sectors.