For the purposes of this paper the North African region includes Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, and Tunisia. However, of these countries only Egypt, and to a lesser extent Morocco and Tunisia produce significant quantities of aquaculture products (i.e., total aquaculture production within these countries in 1996 being reported by FAO as 75,837 mt, 2,300 mt and 1,481 mt respectively; FAO AQUASTAT-PC, April 1998). By contrast, aquaculture production within Algeria (322 mt), Libya (100 mt) and Mauritania (0 mt) is currently only of minor importance compared with capture fisheries. Moreover, at present commercial aquafeed manufacture is not currently practised either in Tunisia or Morocco; these countries depending upon the use of imported pelleted aquafeeds for the intensive culture of marine finfish species (i.e., European seabass-Gilthead seabream), apart from the local preparation and use of farm-made aquafeeds for other species. Egypt alone currently produces about 94 per cent of the total aquaculture production within the North African region; during recent years a growing number of commercial-government feed mills have been constructed to meet the increasing demand for aquafeeds.