The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has signed an agreement with Ghana’s government that will see the West African country take steps to strengthen its fisheries management.
As part of the agreement, Ghana will join the FAO’s EAF Nansen Project, a program offering sub-Saharan African nations resources to sustainably enhance fisheries management to improve food and nutritional security. The project is part of the FAO’s effort to achieve the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDG) concerning the eradication of poverty and increasing environmental sustainability around the globe, the organization said in a press release.
The main goal of the project will be the development of a national framework for the implementation of the ecosystem approach to fisheries. Funding for the project, which will come from the Norwegian government, the Institute of Marine Research and the FAO, will pay for a scientific vessel to survey Ghana’s marine resources in September 2017.
Ghanaian Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development Elizabeth Afoley-Quaye said at the memorandum of understanding signing event in Accra, Ghana on 6 June that the project will help address weaknesses in fisheries management, while also identifying interventions that could create opportunities for long-term transformational and sustainable change in her country.
“Developing human capacity for marine and fisheries research and management is key to the sustenance of our fisheries,” she said.
Abebe Haile-Gabriel, the FAO representative to Ghana and regional manager of the EAF Nansen Project in West Africas, said at the event that the African continent had made significant progress in the last decade in restoring fisheries and growing aquaculture. However, he said the continent continued to face challenges in regard to infrastructure that make data-collection and reforms difficult.
