The launch event gets under way at Akroma Plaza, in Takoradi, Ghana, April 28, 2015. (Friends of the Nation photo)
Acting USAID/Ghana mission director, Ghana’s fisheries minister, local chiefs, regional ministers, members of Parliament, stakeholders and representatives of fishing communities in the Central and Western Regions of Ghana gathered April 28 for the official launch of the USAID/Ghana Sustainable Fisheries Management Project (SFMP)
The event in Takoradi, Ghana, officially kicked off the five-year, $24 million USAID-funded project. CRC leads a consortium of local and international partners in the project implementation. SFMP Chief of Party Brian Crawford received much praise from acting USAID Mission Director Andrew Kara, the honorable Minister Sherry Ayittey of Ghana’s Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development and other officials and fisheries sector stakeholders in attendance.
Minster of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development Sherry Aytittey addresses the crowd. (Friends of the Nation photo)CRC Director Anton Post, second from right, and SFMP Chief of Party Brian Crawford, right, at the launch event. (Friends of the Nation Photo)
CRC Director Anton Post was in attendance and introduced URI President David M. Dooley, who stressed the SFMP project’s importance in a videotaped address. The project team also published an issue brief on the crisis facing Ghana’s small pelagic fishery as part of launch activities.
The event featured performances by Ghanaian dancers and drummers and a skit highlighting the role women can play in preventing fishermen from catching undersized, juvenile fish.
Dancers perform for the crowd. (Friends of the Nation Photo)
Judged from the buzz in media outlets that ensued, the launch event was a tremendous success. Post said that the event created a strong sense of excitement and commitment among all participants.
Local media in The Gambia cite CRC in a report on the Oceans and Fisheries Initiative Learning Partner project of the National Sole Fisheries Co-Management Committee (NASCOM). CRC is one of the initiative’s partners, following its close work with NASCOM during the recently concluded Ba Nafaa project. CRC staff Karen Kent and Kristine Beran were in The Gambia earlier this month and are quoted in the article.
Ghana’s Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development Hanny-Sherry Ayitey speaks with SFMP National Program Manager Kofi Agbogah, SFMP Chief of Party Brian Crawford and SFMP partner SNV’s Country Director Amanda Childress at a reception following the partners meeting Feb. 26, 2015.
More than 40 members from the nine local and international partners implementing the USAID/Ghana Sustainable Fisheries Management Project (SFMP) were joined by USAID and Government of Ghana officials at a retreat in Accra, Ghana, Feb. 25 and 26 that combined fruitful discussions, technical presentations, role-playing and sharing of knowledge and expertise.
Ghana’s Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, Hanny-Sherry Ayitey, and other ministry officials attended a reception at SFMP’s Accra office following the retreat.
CRC is the lead implementer of the project, and the center’s Brian Crawford and Najih Lazar have relocated to Ghana as SFMP’s chief of party and national fisheries manager, respectively.
Meeting participants enjoy a lively exchange of ideas during a meeting breakout session Feb. 26, 2015.
Objectives of the meetings were to understand better the marine fisheries context and other donor projects supporting Ghana’s sustainable fisheries efforts, to foster teamwork and activity execution and to understand policies, procedures and requirements of the five-year project. SFMP’s main objective is to rebuild Ghana’s collapsing fisheries stocks, with an initial focus on small pelagics—a key food and protein source throughout the region that is critical to Ghana’s food security. In this way, SFMP contributes to USAID/Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative.
Officials and participants acknowledged that the team has a demanding and large task before it, with difficult decisions and measures ahead. Officials and project leaders stressed that coordination and cooperation are integral to project success, particularly given the number of partners and activities. Key SFMP activities include improving legal conditions for implementing fisheries co-management, use rights and effort-reduction strategies; enhancing information systems and science-based decision-making and increasing public support and political will needed to make hard choices and change behavior. These components feed into applied management initiatives for targeted fisheries ecosystems.
Rhode Island-based CRC staff Donald Robadue, SFMP project manager; Cindy Moreau, CRC business manager; and Carol McCarthy, CRC communications specialist, traveled to Ghana to participate in the retreat. Partners embraced the spirit of collaboration solidified in the meetings and immediately got to work the next day in more informal, activity-focused meetings at SFMP’s Accra office.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a frequent funding partner of CRC, officially committed $5.5 million dollars to the University of Cape Coast (UCC) in Ghana for a five-year program in fisheries and coastal management capacity development. Last month two UCC officials visited CRC and URI to explore how best to implement such a program. The visit was arranged as part of the CRC-led, USAID-funded Sustainable Fisheries Management Project (SFMP) in Ghana. One of the objectives of that five-year, $24-million project is to strengthen UCC’s fisheries and coastal management department by hosting at URI up to 10 masters and doctoral students from UCC, sponsoring other student and faculty exchanges, conducting joint research and holding a fisheries leadership course in Ghana that draws on URI’s experiences.
This new USAID award will fund the creation of a coastal management center at UCC. You can read the the local Ghanaian media reports here:
From left CRC Director Dr. Anton Post, Dr. Denis Aheto of UCC, CRC’s Chief of Party in Ghana Dr. Brian Crawford and Dr. John Blay at CRC earlier in January. (CRC photo)
Fisheries experts Dr. Denis Worlanyo Aheto and Dr. John Blay of the University of Cape Coast (UCC) in Ghana braved the snow and cold to travel to URI in early January to study models of integrated coastal management and outreach programs and to foster research cooperation and learning opportunities for students at both universities.
“Our primary objective is to look at the various models for how universities can support capacity building in fisheries and coastal management,” said Aheto, head of the department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences at UCC and project manager at UCC’s new Centre for Coastal Management, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Fisheries capacity building, research and extension are at the core of the center’s mission, said Blay, UCC fisheries professor and coordinator of the new center, and URI and Rhode Island are leaders in those areas.
The Coastal Resources Center (CRC) at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography hosted the men for a week as part of CRC’s USAID/Ghana Sustainable Management Fisheries Project (SFMP). Aheto and Blay held discussions with faculty and top administrators across URI, met with members of the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation and Save the Bay, visited National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Department of Environmental Management offices and learned about Rhode Island Sea Grant’s extension and outreach work. “The Sea Grant model is fantastic,” Blay said.
“The role of the state is very strong in driving research in fisheries (in Rhode Island),” Aheto observed. “We would like to adapt this to the situation in coastal Ghana.” They said the URI and Sea Grant experiences have provided them with a framework for addressing the challenge of bringing the government of Ghana on board in terms of commitment and funding for fisheries and coastal management and overcoming the lack of connection among organizations. “That is really the issue (in Ghana), the need to establish a strong connection. There is too large a gulf between the university, the government and the fishermen,” Aheto said.
“The Commercial Fisherman’s Research Foundation is very interesting” in its strong connections to URI and fisheries research, Blay said. “In Ghana the fishermen are not seeing the university as a resource.” That lack of integration translates to a lack of support for university research, the men say, and they want to change that.
Aheto said Rhode Island and Ghana do share similarities when it comes to fisheries and coastal management. “We have the building blocks of a good system in place. We have UCC; we have a ministry of fisheries; we have fishermen’s organizations. The structure is in place, the problem is to bring up the capacity of the people in these institutions.”
Developing that capacity is where the role of URI is particularly important. One of the goals of the five-year SFMP initiative is to strengthen UCC’s fisheries and coastal management department by hosting up to 10 masters and doctoral students from UCC at URI, sponsoring other student and faculty exchanges, conducting joint research and holding a fisheries leadership course in Ghana that draws on URI’s experiences.
Such capacity building already is underway. Next month UCC students begin SFMP fieldwork in two estuary areas in Ghana, said Najih Lazar who is transitioning from the URI Fisheries Center to join SFMP in Ghana as fisheries advisor. “We will focus on applied research, working directly with two communities. UCC students will collect data from fishermen and exchange information with them,” explained Lazar.
Back in Ghana, Blay and Aheto will share what they have learned with their colleagues and counterparts in the government and make their case for outreach and integration. “We are going to make ourselves relevant through discussions with government and fishers and get the dialogue going,” Blay said.
UCC’s Center for Coastal Management already is gaining momentum, they said. The fisheries and coastal management department has bought three vehicles that will allow its 50 undergraduates and 20 graduate students access to field sites for research, and laboratories are getting new equipment and renovation. “We are like new kids on the block. There is much to be excited about,” Aheto said.
