EU partners Ghana to improve fisheries sector

The European Union has launched an environmental sustainability and social equity in Ghana’s fisheries sector to help promote food security and improved livelihoods.

This development also seeks to reduce illegal fishing activities and promote participatory co-management of fisheries.

The project is run by Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), a UK-based non-profit organization and Hen Mpoano a non-profit organization based in Ghana to implement the three-year project.

Ghana’s fisheries sector contributes significantly to the economy as well as provide employment for numerous people.

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About 70 per cent of Ghana’s fish catch comes from the small-scale artisanal sector, but overfishing, illegal fishing, and poor management are threatening the long-term sustainability- hitting these small-scale fisheries the hardest.

Such situations have caused these NGO’s to empower small-scale fishers to secure their tenure rights, implement a co-management approach to fisheries, combat illegal fishing and promote alternative livelihoods as a means to reduce dependence on the fishing sector.

Director of Hen Mpoano Kofi Agbogah, stated that the project would be implemented in 10 districts within the Central Region and the Volta Estuary.

“It is important that we empower these communities and ensure that their voice is heard as artisanal fishers have a vital role to play if we want to retain the sustainability in the fishing sector. We need to secure these communities’ tenure rights, and ring fence their traditional fishing activities against external aggression such as urbanization or other economic activities”

Country Coordinator of EJF Antoine Rougier expressed appreciation to stakeholders for efforts in tackling the unsustainable and illegal fishing practices in that sector.

Reports show that West Africa has the highest rate of illegal fishing practices in the world and that Ghana was also losing so much money to illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing and this contravenes international law on fishing.

EU Ambassador William Hanna also stated that a total of 1.9 million Euros is being committed to supporting the project.

“The good news is that Ghana has worked so hard and today the EU is here to help ensure the sustainability of the fishing sector.”

On her part, Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Elizabeth Afoley Quaye said the government was working with other partners to engage fisher communities to participate in the co-management of the fisheries resources.

“Under this, volunteers in pilot communities-cluster within the Greater Accra Region are being trained and equipped to undertake education and sensitization of their community members on the fisheries laws, report and assist in the prosecution of fisheries infractions, conduct lake and land patrols and also to undertake registration of canoes.

“Other co-management arrangements to institute rights-based approaches in fisheries resource management are being piloted under the West Africa Regional Fisheries programme in some communities in the marine and inland areas”.