Group photo of FCWC Secretariat Staff & JICA Delegation
The Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) played a pivotal role in advancing regional aquaculture by hosting a delegation of experts from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) on 20 February 2025. The purpose of their visit was to discuss and finalize plans for the FCWC-led regional aquaculture seminar scheduled for mid-2025.
The meeting, a collaborative effort, was held to review and refine the TORs, agree on logistics, and discuss the seminar’s themes. The seminar aims to bring together representatives from the FCWC Member States, international and regional organisations, donors and the private sector to stimulate and strengthen the private-public dialogue on investment and industrialisation in the industry.
The activity is strategically aligned with Area of Intervention 4 of the First Phase of the Transition Programme FCWC’s Strategic Action Plan 2021-2030, a strategy developed with JICA support. Area of Intervention 4 aims to elaborate and implement a coordinated aquaculture development policy at the FCWC level. The outputs of this meeting will provide key insights to inform the regional policy development process. The participants at today’s meeting in the FCWC Regional MCS Centre Conference Room also discussed the crucial task of operationalising the regional working group on aquaculture established in 2021. A regional aquaculture working group meeting is included in the 2025 annual workplan of FCWC that was adopted at the 15th FCWC Conference of Ministers in Liberia. The working group comprises Directors of Aquaculture and other representatives from the institution responsible for aquaculture in the FCWC member States, with a mission “to create a coordinated regional stakeholders networking initiative to support aquaculture development actions in the FCWC jurisdictions in accordance with the Comprehensive Strategic Framework for Sustainable of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development (CSFS FAD) of ECOWAS.
