More than 400 tons of fish of the tilapia species, raised in captivity in the Cahora Bassa reservoir, in Tete, were processed and exported through the Beira Fishing Port, in Sofala.

The exportation of the tilapia fish arises under a contract signed, recently, between the Chicoa Fish company, based in Songo district, and the management of that port infrastructure.

The director of the Beira fishing port, António Remédio, quoted by "Notícias", said that the number of captive fish producers who want to join the processing services is growing.

The responsible referred that contacts are underway with industrial and semi-industrial fishing operators for the full exploitation of the six existing refrigerated chambers with storage capacity of 500 tons of fish per day.

It should be noted that in addition to tilapia, the Cahora Bassa lake is also predominantly populated by kapenta, a fish that in recent times has tended to be scarce, a fact associated with excessive fishing effort and smuggling.

Available data indicate that, due to the high demand for fish, there are regular movements of foreign citizens, such as Zimbabweans, Malawians, Zambians, and Congolese, in the region of the reservoir, looking for kapenta.

Sailing on the Zambezi River, which feeds Cahora Bassa, the smugglers of fish are done in small rowing boats, usually in the dead of night, many of them from Malawi and Zambia, until they reach the reservoir, via the district of Zumbu, to achieve their intentions.

Meanwhile, official figures indicate that from January to October last year, Tete province exported to the republics of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and Democratic Congo about 124,000 tons of kapenta, which earned $256,933,400.

In Tete, kapenta fish is one of the strategic export products, after electricity from HCB, tobacco from MLT, and coal.