Business 18 June 2026 Daily Monitor (Uganda)
From Hotel Dreams to Fish Ponds: Katongole's Innovative Venture
Emmanuel Katongole, a former IT consultant, has transformed the foundation of his unbuilt 29-bedroom hotel in Kisaasi into an innovative catfish farm, driven by a quest for a low-supervision, high-return investment. Source: https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/why-katongole-turned-his-29-bedroom-hotel-into-fishponds-5501260
After a two-decade career in IT consultancy at the Ministry of Finance, Emmanuel Katongole, 54, sought a business venture that offered a solid return on investment with minimal oversight. His initial idea in 2015 was to construct a 29-bedroom hotel in Kisaasi, a project he commenced but halted at the foundation stage.
His research led him to fish farming, specifically catfish. He found tilapia farming too water-intensive, and Nile perch farming was not yet domesticated for local rearing. Catfish appealed to him due to their carnivorous nature, making them efficient eaters of organic waste like decaying matter.
Scanning his surroundings, Katongole identified an abundance of discarded chicken and fish intestines in Kisaasi, which would serve as a cost-effective feed source. During the 2020 lockdown, local youths offered to secure the unfinished hotel structure, and Katongole engaged them to collect the waste intestines for his fish, effectively providing labor for his project.
He adapted the hotel foundation by sealing partitions to hold water and introduced 11,000 catfish fingerlings. Utilizing research from AI and Gemini, he learned about affordable fish feed alternatives, particularly in Southeast Asia. While initial fingerling feed was imported from the Netherlands, he developed a local feed using minced intestines mixed with cassava flour and dried, then pelletized using a Shs1 million meat mincer.
Katongole was inspired by a young entrepreneur in Busega who buys fresh catfish at Shs7,000 per kilo and sells smoked fish for Shs40,000 to European markets. He anticipates harvesting between 8,000 and 10,000 kilograms of catfish by September, aiming to sell at Shs7,000 per kilogram. He believes catfish farming allows him to be a price setter rather than a price taker, as buyers will come to his farm.
Future plans include installing a water recycling system and establishing vertical beds for vegetable cultivation, further diversifying his farm’s produce.