As part of the activities in the workplan of the Letter of Agreement (LOA) partnership between the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) and the FAO’s Fisheries and Resources Monitoring Secretariat (FIRMS), experts from both organizations conducted in-country missions to Benin and Cote d’Ivoire in the first half of 2024.

The capacity development in-country missions were organized to further strengthen FCWC Member States’ collation, harmonization, and reporting of fishery data, including a streamlined routine workflow of fishery statistics according to the reporting duties of these Member countries.

The FCWC member states National Focal Points, in particular, officers responsible for compiling and submitting data to FAO, ICCAT, FCWC (and other regional and international fisheries bodies) attended the workshops organized under the mission.

The missions provided a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of the fisheries information management system currently in place to collect, process and produce fishery statistics.  National requirements for fisheries data collection, storage, analysis and data reporting were evaluated and opportunities to move to an alternative system, were identified.

The missions led the attendees to identify and resolve issues with the coherence and consistency of national fishery statistics data for each country regarding national, regional (e.g. FCWC, FAO Statlant34) and international (e.g. FAO NS1, ICCAT) reporting obligations. The missions have further strengthened the capacity of FCWC Member States to collate, manage and maintain a regional database of Catch and Effort at the fishing units level.

A key activity for the workshops was the review and finalization of the results of FAO ‘Matrix for the characterization of fishing activities’, and current fishing unit definitions.

A mission will be conducted in Ghana in mid- July 2024.