Incatema and ECOFISH create a platform to promote sustainable fishing models

29 March, 2022

With the objective of improving regional cooperation and collaboration, the European ECOFISH programme led by Incatema Consulting & Engineering has designed a specific regional platform for creating synergies between the nine interventions included in the programme, and to promote sustainable, small-scale fishing models integrated in their local communities.

The Programme includes various interventions in different countries, for example to improve the economic resilience and food safety of small-scale fishing communities on the Red Sea’s northeast coast, in Sudan; for sustainable management of two cross-border basins between Ethiopia and South Sudan, and between Ethiopia and Kenya, in lake Turkana; and to strengthen community fishing in Namibia, among others.

The programme’s beneficiary countries are Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda and Zanzibar.

The platform constitutes a community of users and a learning ecosystem through which to share experiences and best practices and develop the capacity of these projects’ stakeholders and beneficiaries. “This is especially relevant”, points out Ana Romero, Director of Consulting Projects at Incatema Consulting & Engineering, “because it represents an opportunity for progress that will undoubtedly contribute to more sustainable and efficient exploitation of fishing resources, which in practice represent a significant contribution to the diet of the local population, contributing to the food safety of the zone.

The aim of the platform is to replicate and scale up these nine intervention models to create a driver for transformational change in continental and small-scale fishing throughout the entire region of East Africa, South Africa, and the Indian Ocean, as well as beyond, given that in addition to both the Indian and Atlantic oceans, the programme extends to large fresh water masses, such as lake Turkana between Ethiopia and Kenya, lake Tanganyika in Zambia, and lake Victoria, situated between Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

The ECOFISH programme has also developed a statistical system for improving the assessment of the fishing industry’s contribution to the national economy in eleven countries of East Africa, South Africa, and the Indian Ocean, as previously reported here.