The ordinary session of 2016 of the Advisory and Coordination Committee (ACC) of the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC), was held on April 11, 2016 in Accra, Ghana. For the occasion, the fisheries Directors of the six FCWC’s member States, namely Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Togo forming this technical body, were joined by the heads of national departments for Monitoring, Control and Surveillance (MCS).
The ACC had to review FCWC’s activities during the first quarter of 2016, do a follow-up concerning the commitment and implementation of the recommendations of the FCWC’s 8th Conference of Ministers held in December 2015 in Ghana and then refine the future action planning tools in order to achieve a synergy of action and collaboration in the sub region.
It was also important for stakeholders to discuss about issues relating to the ratification process of relevant international and regional fisheries management instruments including the FAO Ports States Measures Agreement and to agree on the implementation of on-going projects including the project on fisheries intelligence and monitoring, control and surveillance support and the launch of the TCP or Technical Cooperation Project for the strengthening of the fisheries routine data collection in the States of the FCWC region. The parties also had to agree on consistent development perspectives and implementation of fisheries management plans in the sub region with various initiatives such as the AEF Nansen project, the USAID-SFMP project (Sustainable Fisheries Management Project) and the West Africa Regional Fisheries Programme (WARFP) for Ghana.
As far as they were concerned, the FAO representative, Mr. Van Der Knaap, fisheries Expert and FCWC’s Experts were enthusiastic and committed to the full success of these initiatives in the sub-region. The States also agreed to ensure that the fisheries sector is a priority in national investment programs of their respective countries in order to benefit from the support opportunities offered by institutional investors and development partners, as well as to further strengthen the partnership with the private sector to enable improved management of fisheries resources in the FCWC region.
