African Union retreat to harmonise the framework for alignment of fisheries and aquaculture
April 2015 - Sandy Davies (NFDS Technical Director) and Mark Ssemkula (Project Officer) were in Accra, Ghana for the initial meeting of the Norwegian Development Agency (Norad) funded 3 year project to support the Fisheries Intelligence and MCS support in West Africa initiative. The project brings together the six member countries of the Fisheries Committee of the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) in a new regional partnership to cooperate in fisheries management and particularly stopping illegal fishing.
The agreed next steps are to conduct regional training and develop national focus groups prior to the full launch of the Task Force at the Ministers meeting for the FCWC in December 2015.
The Coordination Team of the project comprises of the FCWC secretariat, Trygg Mat Tracking, Stop Illegal Fishing and NFDS.
June 2015 – Sandy Davies (NFDS Technical Director) was in Nairobi, Kenya in her position as the Coordinator of the African Union and NEPAD Agency Monitoring, Control and Coordination (MCS) Working Group to participate in a retreat to refine and harmonise policy parameters and indicators for alignment with the Pan-African Policy Framework and Reform Strategy for Fisheries and Aquaculture. The reform policy was endorsed at the Summit of African Heads of States and Governments, in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, in June 2014, as a blue print for African fisheries and Aquaculture development. The retreat group harmonised the previous work undertaken in Kampala to identify indicators and criteria that can be used as a tracking tool for alignment of national and regional fisheries and aquaculture policies with the reform policy.
