Government plans fish revolution with UN funds

Even though Gabon has some 800 km of coastline, it is forced to import more than 7,000 tonnes of fish every year. But with a new grant from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the government hopes to change all that. "The US$ 270,000 grant from the FAO will allow Gabon to plan a development strategy for the fishing industry for the long-term, something we've never done before," Georges Mba Asseko, the government official in charge of fisheries, told IRIN in an interview. "We want to establish the state of fish stocks, evaluate the potential of our waters and see what we can fish," he added. "We think that Gabon has the capacity to harvest some 280,000 tonnes of deep sea fish, 25,000 tonnes of molluscs and 4,200 tonnes of crustaceans annually." Despite these healthy stock levels - rare in a continent whose coastline is mostly overfished - Gabon catches only 35,000 tonnes of fish a year. That brings in about 35 billion CFA (US$ 64 million) or just over one percent of gross domestic product. However, the West African nation is still forced to import some 7,000 tonnes of fish annually to meet the demand of its 1.2 million population. In 1998, conscious that Gabon did not have the means to exploit the economic potential of its offshore waters on its own, the government signed a five-year deal with the European Union to allow foreign vessels to fish in its 200-mile economic zone. The agreement was renewed last year. Today most modern commercial fishing is done by French, Spanish and Portuguese trawlers, with official figures showing a foreign fleet of 87. The FAO estimates that at most only 20 percent of the crew working on these ships are Gabonese nationals and that the fishing industry provides very few job opportunities for the local population on land, because the infrastructure onshore is so poor. Port Mole, the main port in the capital Libreville, is a free-for-all of fish stands, general food stalls and passenger ferry offices. There is no facility to process the catch for export whole. Nor are there jobs to be had in the seaside capital filleting, canning or otherwise processing the fish for consumption. The government had plans to build a fish processing plant in Gabon's other main port city, Port-Gentil, but it has not yet found the funds to do so. "The port infrastructure for receiving the vessels and the catch is not really adequate for the fleet that's operating in Gabonese waters so they land somewhere else," Ulf Wijkstrom, the chief of FAO's fisheries department, told IRIN by telephone from Rome. The FAO initiative comes at a time when President Omar Bongo is trying to rapidly diversify the economy away from its traditional dependence on oil. Oil export has declined sharply over the past seven years and his government is now seeking to bring in foreign partners to help exploit Gabon's other natural resources. Gabon recently gave China the green light to develop iron ore deposits in the north of the country and earlier this week, Bongo signed an agreement with visiting Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva for Brazilian companies to open manganese mines in Gabon. While the FAO study, set to last for a year, will focus on commercial fishing, experts hope there will be a trickle-down benefit for small-scale inshore fishermen who operate from motorised canoes. "By providing more facilities, small-scale fisheries will benefit and there will be an a knock-on effect on the local job market in Gabon," Wijkstrom said. Janvier Ngoma was one fisherman crossing his fingers in Libreville. "We're all hoping that the new FAO aid will help us get stronger boats, tighten up security at sea and pave the way fro the construction of fish processing and conservation factories," he told IRIN. Artisanal fishing does provide income and food for some Gabonese but not many. Only 12 percent of nearly the country's 1,600 inshore fishermen are actually from Gabon. Most are Nigerians whose families moved south in the 1950s and have remained in the country. The fishermen use narrow, motorised, and often brightly-painted wooden pirogues and catch their fish using sardine bait. But they say that even though their fish is fresher, they are losing out because they are undercut on price by frozen fish imported from Senegal and the Far East. "The local fish is fresher and better quality and we sell it straight from our boats for between 1,200 and 1,300 kilo. But fish coming from abroad costs only around 1,100 CFA a kilo," Maxime Ndombi, one of the rare Gabonese fisherman, grumbled.