Documentary Homing. [Video/Wuxi Broadcasting and Television Group]
In the 1980s, tilapia from Africa was introduced to Taihu Lake in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, where aquaculture helped the species thrive. Four decades later, the fish-farming expertise and conservation philosophy that took root there are traveling back to Africa along the same route.
That reverse journey is chronicled in Homing, a documentary produced by Wuxi Broadcasting and Television Group this year.
Yohana Mirumbe, a young fisheries officer with Tanzania's Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries, came to Wuxi in 2022 to study at the Freshwater Fisheries Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences. On the shores of Taihu Lake, he saw a fisheries patrol vessel for the first time and learned about the Yangtze River basin's 10-year fishing ban, a moratorium intended to allow fish stocks to recover.
One lesson stayed with him, "This is for sustainable development — so there will be more and better fish in the future."
After returning home, Yohana saw a monthly system introduced on Lake Victoria: 10 days without fishing, followed by 20 days of fishing. Catches have since rebounded year by year. But he believed this Africa's largest freshwater lake still needed a comprehensive plan for sustainable development.
In April 2026, Chinese aquaculture entrepreneur Scott Xu was invited to Tanzania. Standing on a cage farm in Lake Victoria, Yohana and Xu sketched out a blueprint for a full industry chain covering cage farming, canning, fishmeal and feed.
The documentary has aired in prime time on national television in Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania and Nigeria, drawing more than 1.51 million online views.
The fish has come home. So has the technology to farm it, and so has the idea of sustainability. Against the backdrop of the China-Africa Year of People-to-People Exchanges, its migration reflects a wider story of genuine cooperation and shared development between civilizations and a vision of a shared future for humanity.
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