The Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) Secretariat, in collaboration with the EAF-Nansen Programme of the FAO, held the First Workshop of the FCWC Fisheries Management Working Group on 4-5 March 2025 at the Conference Room of the Fisheries Research Institute Building in Tema, Ghana.
The two-day workshop brought together focal points from the four of the FCWC Member States (Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo) under the Regional Partnership for the Joint Management of Small Pelagics in the West-Central Gulf of Guinea project, representatives of the EAF-Nansen Programme, and the FCWC Secretariat to operationalise the regional working group and thereby provide reliable scientific advice and data-driven decision-making in fisheries management of the region with a focus on small pelagics.
The workshop is an activity under the Regional Partnership for the Joint Management of Small Pelagics in the West-Central Gulf of Guinea project, which aims to strengthen fisheries’ management systems targeting small pelagic shared stocks to align with the ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF). This 18-month project, funded by the EAF-Nansen programme, is structured around two main objectives:
(i) useful information for fisheries management and (ii) regionally coordinated management of small pelagic fisheries.
One of the core outcomes of the workshop is the development of policy briefs on the management options for implementing recommendations from the Fishery Committee for the Eastern Central Atlantic (CECAF) working groups on managing small pelagic fisheries in the FCWC region. Each of the four pilot countries was represented at this workshop by two focal points each (one for statistics and one for fisheries management) to initiate a consultation process between fisheries research and fisheries management to agree on the format and establish a workplan to develop these policy briefs.
The establishment of a regional fisheries management working group aligns with the FCWC 2021-2030 Strategic Action Plan (SAP). Specifically, Intervention Area 1 calls for the implementation of the FCWC’s Regional Fisheries Resources Management Plan, while intervention Area 3 focuses on advancing fisheries research and enhancing the regional information system to support management measures.
