It does not take an expert’s eye to recognize that the fisheries sector in The Gambia is in serious trouble. There is significant depletion of fish stock in our waters, as anyone fishermen can easily attest. Our government is incapable or unwilling to take actions to control our waters to prevent illegal fishing and over-exploitation. Unfavourable agreements signed with foreign countries and companies in the fisheries sector abound, resulting in losses instead of expected gains. The supply of fishes in our domestic market is low, which is leading to uncontrollable increase in fish prices, with adverse consequences on food security.
Given this unfortunate state of affairs in this critical sector, it is important to have substantive public discussion of its causes. I would like to focus on the role of the government in our current predicament by scrutinising key official fisheries sector documents: the legislative act, regulations, sector policy and sector strategy. The relevant legislative document is the Fisheries Act 2007, and its associated regulation is the Fisheries Regulations 2008 (partly updated in 2024). The sector policy is the Fisheries and the Aquaculture Policy 2018, and the sector strategy is the Fisheries and Aquaculture Sector Strategy 2017-2021.
In principle, the following relationship should exist among the aforementioned documents. The legislative act provides the basic legal framework for the sector in the form of principles and guidelines by granting statutory authorities to relevant entities. More specifically, the legislative act grants the authority to the Ministry of Fisheries to implement those goals and principles in the legislative act through the issuance of rules and regulations. The sector policy should provide guidelines for government decisions in the sector. And strategy should delineate actions that the government takes to achieve stated objectives.
The first thing that should jump out about the above fisheries sector documents is the fact that they are out of date. The existing fisheries act is still stuck in year 2007 and it refers to positions that are not aligned with the current administrative structure. The only document that was recently updated is the regulation but even that is more of an addendum where only the license fees were adjusted earlier this year. This lack of update of key official documents is reflective of the lack of proper attention the current government has given the sector, just as it has fallen short of instituting necessary reforms in numerous other sectors.
One prominent kind of shortcoming in all these documents is the large disconnect between the assumed capabilities of government entities versus the reality on the ground. For instance, the Fisheries Act 2007 devotes substantial space to the requirement that official observers are required to be placed in fishing boats to ensure that quantities of fish caught are adequately monitored. Furthermore, this requirement is further cemented by the regulation document.
Needless to say, not only is this legal requirement not implemented in practice but no actions have been taken to improve the capacity of the fisheries department to do so. The Act also mentions the Gambian Navy being required to test specimens of fish to ensure that any aspects of the Fisheries Act is not violated. Yet, the reality is that the Navy does not have such capability and most of its officers not aware that this is even part of their responsibility.
One may think this disconnect between directives and capability would be redressed to some extent by the sector policy and strategy but that would be highly mistaken. Neither of these documents seem attuned to the above problem. Instead, the disconnect between authority and capability that originates in the Fisheries Act is reproduced through the Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy 2018 and the Fisheries Regulation 2008.
Another shortcoming of the Fisheries Act 2007 is the amount of space devoted to activities that are irrelevant in The Gambia. This includes regulation of fishing in the “high seas”, which refers to the open ocean outside of the country’s economic exclusion zone (EEZ). The EEZ is an area of the ocean directly adjacent to the country’s territory and extends to 370km in the ocean. Bear in mind that the Gambia has difficulty patrolling its waters even a few kilometers off its coastline. Given this context, how realistic is it for the authorities to regulate fishing in the high seas outside of our EEZ? And comically, there is also a section in the Fisheries Act devoted to whale fishing, which is as out of touch as devoting a section to rearing of reindeer in a Gambian livestock sector document.
What the inclusion of such irrelevant issues suggests is that part of the drafting of much of these official documents involved simply copying similar documents from other countries. It wouldn’t surprise anyone to realize that monitoring fishing on high seas is relevant for some countries with advanced fishing industries where commercial fishing vessels travel thousands of miles beyond their coastlines. Furthermore, these are countries where the fishing of whales or other exotic marine life could be relevant. Needless to say, such realities do not describe the Gambian fisheries sector.
In areas where our official fisheries documents should have delved deeper, they instead simply glossed over. Specifically, one of the areas that should have received significant attention in the Fisheries Act is the negotiation of commercial arrangements such as access agreements, fish oil processing companies or joint-ventures with companies, among others. Yet, this section of the Fisheries Act is quite thin in substance. In addition, there is no section on negotiations in the policy document. It is therefore not surprising that The Gambia currently has bilateral fishing agreements that are unfavourable to the country, as well as having investments in the sector that are leading to environmental degradation, over-fishing and dwindling local supply of fish.
Another major shortcoming of the government’s approach to the fisheries sector is its poor treatment of the aquaculture sub-sector. This is potentially one of the most important sub-sectors given the scope it has in enhancing the inclusiveness of the fisheries sector, particularly inland. As in other sections of the Fisheries Act 2007, however, there are conditions included in this area of the legislation that are inconsistent with achieving goals that should be the government’s priorities.
For example, the Act makes it a requirement that all aquaculture activities must undertake an environmental impact assessment. The legislation makes no distinction by size, thereby placing an onerous burden on small-scale aquaculture activities when such a requirement should be reserved only for large-scale operations. It goes without saying that such a requirement makes no sense in The Gambia where the sector is not only nascent but likely to be characterized by individuals undertaking aquaculture on small-scale basis.
Within the aquaculture sub-sector, the Fisheries Act 2007 also bans the transfer of fish from one location to another within the country without a license. The transfer of fish from one operation to another is a standard feature of any thriving aquaculture sub-sector since only a few establishments can undertake production where the fish are routinely sold to other locations when they reach fingerling stage. After all, not every aquaculture site can have its own hatchery. Given how painfully slow standard bureaucratic processes in our ministries are, requiring a license for a routine and necessary activity would effectively kill entrepreneurship in the sector before anything gets off the ground. In all likelihood, there is no process in place at the ministry to process such licenses anyway.
It is no wonder that the development of the aquaculture sub-sector has been held back in this country despite the fact that it has long taken off in many neighboring countries. Thankfully, many entrepreneurial Gambians, including youths, are working hard to kickstart the sector. The promising emergence in this subsector is not because of government efforts but rather in spite of the huddles it had placed there.
A superficial reading of these official documents could lead one to believe that there are well crafted. However, on closer reading and within the context of an actual country with localized problems that need to be addressed, these documents will be found to be clearly wanting. First and foremost, they are not well adapted to local contexts, and therefore it is not surprising that these documents have not contributed to achieving any meaningful national goals in the sector. The consultants typically hired to draft such documents carry out their duties as required because their responsibilities are limited. Rather, the failure is at the level of officials who are supposed to provide terms of references for these consultants and oversee their work. But in most cases, this does not happen. In other words, the failure of duty to perform happens at the level of public officials.
The above should give a flavor of the fundamental problems we have in the fisheries sector in The Gambia. Space constraint makes it impossible to highlights all the government’s shortcomings in a single article. Nevertheless, the problems that exist are visible to anyone who takes a look. The sector is crying for proper reforms through improved legislative instruments and better regulations, as well as sector policy and strategy that are attuned to the realities on the ground.
