Urban aquaculture is emerging as an increasingly important component of food and nutrition security, livelihoods, and sustainable city food systems in rapidly urbanising low- and middle-income countries. In Kenya, however, aquaculture development has largely been approached through sectoral production programmes rather than through urban governance and spatial planning systems. This has resulted in limited recognition of aquaculture as an urban land use, fragmented institutional mandates, weak public health and environmental safeguards, and an absence of structured investment guidance for urban and peri-urban aquaculture enterprises. This paper develops an evidence-based framework for integrating urban aquaculture into county spatial planning in Kenya, drawing on lessons from international practice and local stakeholder evidence. The study applies a qualitative design combining document review and key informant interviews with personnel drawn from county fisheries departments, physical and land-use planning, environment and NEMA-related functions, public health, water and sanitation utilities, and aquaculture enterprises. Evidence synthesis was organised around core planning domains: land-use recognition and zoning, water supply and effluent governance, food safety and biosecurity, infrastructure and value chain planning, and enterprise enabling systems. Findings indicate that while national and regional blue economy strategies increasingly acknowledge aquaculture as an economic priority, county planning instruments (including CIDPs and spatial plans) rarely provide explicit provisions to guide safe and investable urban aquaculture development. Stakeholders consistently identified planning deficits in zoning, licensing pathways, wastewater management protocols, and enforcement coordination as primary barriers to sustainable scaling. Based on these findings and global planning experiences, the paper proposes a six-pillar Urban Aquaculture Spatial Planning Framework for Kenya and outlines an early implementation roadmap that can be adopted by counties such as Nairobi, Kisumu, Mombasa, Nakuru, Eldoret, and the Kiambu urban corridor. The framework supports policy coherence, risk-sensitive siting, and structured growth of climate-smart urban aquaculture aligned to county development priorities.
Anne Mokoro (Tue,) studied this question.