Asili Company | About: Built From the Ocean Up

Vision & Goals

A future where ocean regeneration and
community prosperity are the same thing.

Asili Company exists to show, at commercial scale, that lasting protection of tropical coastal seas can go hand in hand with the prosperity of the communities who govern them.

The CORE Zone model is the mechanism. Each CORE Zone is a partnership between Asili and a village cooperative, built so that protecting the sea becomes the most rewarding choice open to the community.

Ventures that work in community resource areas and treat communities as anything less than equal partners cannot last. Asili Company is built on that principle: we only profit when our partners do too, and only when the seagrass meadows our production depends on are treated with the ecological importance they warrant.

A network of CORE Zones across Zanzibar

Community-protected areas of seagrass and sea, each closed to fishing, each ranched by a village cooperative, and each paying its own way from first harvest.

Communities earn first

Wages for the people who run the ranch before the first harvest, then half of the returns to the community, shared between the workforce and the village.

A compounding platform, not a project cycle

Every new CORE Zone shares the same hatchery, processing, buyers and evidence base. The model is designed to outlast any single funder, partner or project cycle.

Commercial Goal

Build a trusted supply of hatchery-raised, community-ranched bêche-de-mer from the Western Indian Ocean, traceable from hatchery to buyer.

Ecological Goal

Bring sandfish back across the seagrass meadows of Pemba and Zanzibar, and let the whole ecosystem inside each closed area recover with them.

Governance Goal

Support the government in recognising CORE Zones as OECMs, Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures, counting toward the global 30×30 target.

Why This Model Had to Be Built

Building, failing, trying again, and eventually understanding why.

We have seen conservation and livelihood projects stop when funding dries up and the project operators move on, leaving communities with failing infrastructure and lost hope. The USAID cuts are a recent example.

We have seen communities lose faith in models and organisations that took over governance of the ocean commons and gave back little more than top-down enforcement of rules made elsewhere.

The root problem was always the same: conservation set against livelihoods, protecting ecosystems from people, when the two should work together toward the same goal of restoring abundance.

CORE Zones recognise that the regeneration of our economies and ecosystems can, and must, happen together.

Timothy Klückow running a community training session on Pemba Island

The Team

Three directors.

Working across aquaculture, ocean conservation and coastal community development in East Africa and the Western Indian Ocean.

Timothy Klückow

CEO & Technical Director

Timothy has more than 15 years of experience in community aquaculture across Madagascar, mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. He was Blue Ventures' National Aquaculture Lead in Madagascar and wrote the 2020 Sandfish Farming Manual.

He co-authored research showing that sandfish farming enhances seagrass growth (Arnull, Wilson, Klückow et al., 2021), is a 2020 Blue Pioneers alumnus, and lives on Pemba Island.

Sea cucumber production, aquaculture science, the hatchery, research partnerships and investment inquiries: aquaculture@fullcircle.dev

Alexandra Garcin

Marketing & Sales Director

Alexandra co-founded Asili Company and leads its marketing and sales, connecting CORE Zone harvests with buyers and distribution partners who value knowing where and how their product was produced.

Product inquiries, buyer relationships, sales partnerships and distribution: markets@fullcircle.dev

Daud Salum

Director of Operations, Zanzibar

Daud leads Asili Company's field operations on Pemba: the community partnerships, the relationships with Shehia Fishers Committees and Shehia leadership, and the day-to-day running of the model with partner cooperatives.

His roots in Zanzibar's fishing communities are the foundation the CORE Zone partnerships are built on.

Zanzibar operations, community partnerships and field visits: zanzibar@fullcircle.dev