The Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), signs MoU to strengthen fisheries management.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Fisheries and Aquaculture Development Ministry of Ghana has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to sustainably enhance fisheries management to improve food and nutrition security.
The MOU forms part of a larger programme, which has been implemented through several phases since 1975.
The EAF Nansen Project offers an opportunity to coastal countries in sub-Saharan Africa to receive technical support from FAO for the development of national frameworks for the implementation of the ecosystem approach to fisheries. It was set up as a means to achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) related to eradication of poverty and hunger while simultaneously ensuring environmental sustainability.
Hon. Mrs Elizabeth Afoley-Quaye, the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, at the signing event said the Nansen project would help address the weaknesses in fisheries management and also identify interventions that would create opportunities for long term transformational and sustainable change in coastal countries.
The Minister expressed her appreciation to the Norwegian Government for the support, the Institute of Marine Research, and the FAO for the initiating the second phase of the project which would incorporate climate variability and pollution of the oceans.
Dr Abebe Haile-Gabriel, the FAO Representative to Ghana and Regional Programme Leader for Africa, while the African continent had made much progress in the last decade in restoring fisheries and aquaculture as national and regional development priorities, challenges such as weak human capacities and systems for information collection and analysis remain a key constraint to a positive transformation of the fisheries sector.
“Developing human capacity for marine and fisheries research and management is thus key to the sustenance of our fisheries”, He noted.
The 2017 work plan includes a new vessel to explore waters along the Ghanaian shores during the month of September. The presence of the vessel in the waters of beneficiary countries including Ghana has helped acquire greater understanding of the need to properly manage marine resources. This phase of the survey involves more than 80 participants from African countries, including Ghana and scientists from universities in Norway.