Dr. Ousman Gajigo
One of most dramatic ways in which food insecurity is manifested in The Gambia is the significant increase in the price of fish over the past couple of years. There are many factors that accounts for our high cost of this commodity. However, one of the significant contributors is the limited local supply of fish at a time when the urbanization rate of the country is rapidly increasing.
What many people may not be aware of is the role of the recent fisheries agreement that the government signed with itsSenegalese counterpart. The latest version of this fisheriesagreement was signed in September 2023. This agreement is damaging to the country’s interest. It is yet another demonstration of the inability or unwillingness of the current leadership to be patriotic when dealing with national affairs.
The agreement is unfavorable to The Gambia in ways that contribute to the current unaffordable price of fish. For the sake of brevity, I will focus on Article 1 of the agreement. The first paragraph of this article states: “The government of each State shall allow Artisanal fishermen of the other State to fish in the waters under its jurisdiction, under the same conditions as its nationals, in accordance with the laws and regulations in force”.
The phrase “Artisanal fishermen” refers to just the usual fishermen in wooden boats that dominate the fishing industries in both Senegal and Gambia, as opposed to commercial fishermen that operate with major vessels. In Senegal, for instance, artisanal fishermen account for over 80% of the fisheries products in the country. This part of the agreement is essentially saying that any fishermen in any of the two countries can fish in each other’s seas. Basically, a Senegalese fishing vessel would be treated the same as a Gambian fishing vessel if both operate just off the coast of Tanji or Gunjur.
This is a major red flag, and it is a clause no Gambian official should have allowed in an agreement for this sector. Such a clause would not have been a problem if The Gambia and Senegal had similar fishing industry size. The two countries are not the same size in population, fishing stock, fishermen or fishing area. To have an agreement where all Senegalese artisanal fishermen have access to Gambian waters is a bad deal for the country because it is a recipe to overwhelm our fisheries sector.
Even by a decade ago, the number of artisanal fishermen in Senegal had surpassed 100,000. With this large number of fishermen, there are now over 24,000 fishing boats for artisanal fishermen in that country. The number of artisanal fishermen in The Gambia, on the other hand, is a small fraction of the Senegalese number. The last time a proper counting of our fishermen was done (about two decades ago), it was found that we had about 6,000. Moreover, during that count, it was found that half of those fishermen in The Gambia were actually Senegalese. On the other hand, there is a negligible percentage of Gambian artisanal fishermen operating in Senegal.
Given this huge difference in the size of fishermen between the two countries, a small fraction of the fishermen from Senegal is more than enough to overwhelm the Gambian fishing industry. On the other hand, even if a majority of the Gambian fishermen where to move to Senegal, they would represent only a tinyproportion of fishermen there. Therefore, negotiated access to the waters of each country should be proportional to each country’s domestic fishing industry.
Let’s look at the above point in a different way. The total area of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of The Gambia is about 23,000 square km. A country’s EEZ is the area in the sea that is adjacent to its territory and extends up to 370km in the sea. For coastal fishing, the EEZ therefore represents the resource base of the country. The EEZ of Senegal is about 159,000 square km. In other words, Senegal’s EEZ is about 7 times larger than ours. If Senegalese fishermen have access to Gambia’s much smallerEEZ, one can immediately see how the country’s fish stock can be significantly depleted.
An agreement of this nature should have placed a limit on the number of Senegalese fishermen that can fish in Gambian waters at any given point in time. That number should be proportional to the number of Gambian fishermen. The reality is that even just 5% of Senegalese fishermen would overwhelm the number of Gambian fishermen.
And the amount of foreign fishermen allowed should be reflective of our ability to enforce our laws in our fishing waters. This means that the officials of the Gambian Ministry of Fisheries should have recognized the fact that The Gambia is already experiencing significant depletion of our fisheries resources due to foreign vessels illegally fishing in our waters because our navy cannot fully patrol our coastline. To miss such an important point in the negotiation of this agreement is simply mind boggling.
Another major problematic part of the agreement is the second paragraph of Article 1. And it states: “Artisanal fishermen of either state working in the Gambia or in Senegal are obliged to land their catches in one of the two States”.
This means that Senegalese fishing vessels can enter and fish in Gambian waters and then take their catch directly to Senegal without any obligation to report the volume of their catch ordisembark to deposit part of their catch on Gambian territory. This is a problem that has implications not only for the availability of fish in our local market but also on our ability to monitor fishing levels so as to prevent the depletion of our fish.
By allowing even a fraction of the much larger Senegalesefishing fleet to take their catch directly to Senegal, the availability of fish in our markets would be severely impacted. This lower supply of fish in our market is one of the driving factors behind the uncontrollable increase in the price of fish.
It also means that since Senegalese fishing vessels can be allowed to fish in Gambian waters and take their catch directly to Senegal, the Gambian authorities would have no way of monitoring the quantities of fish that are being taken fromcountry’s waters. And therefore, the scale of over-fishing and resource depletion in the country may actually be far worse than feared. After all, the agreement does not require Senegalese vessels to be licensed or registered in The Gambia when fishing in our waters.
Furthermore, from what I have been able to gather, thisagreement with Senegal was apparently signed without getting the inputs of key stakeholders. Stakeholders such as representatives of Gambian artisanal fishermen, coastal community leaders and other individuals involved in local fish marketing in the downstream segment of the value chain would have brought important perspectives.
What this agreement has also done is aggravate some of the existing weaknesses we already have in the fisheries sector in the country. For example, night-time fishing between June and November is prohibited and well enforced in Senegal and Mauritania each year to allow regeneration of the fish stock.This restriction is essential for the sustainability of the fisheries sector. Without it, there would be significant depletion of fish in all of the sub-region.
However, this practice is not enforced in The Gambiaunfortunately. This means that an unusually large number of Senegalese fishermen move to the country to fish at night between June and November. Anyone who visits coastal townsin Kombo South in the rainy season can attest to the influx of Senegalese fishermen during this period to partake in an activity that is restricted in their home country. The lack of enforcement of this simple but important restriction also contributes to the depletion of the fishing stock in our waters. This depletion in fishing stock in turn reduces the size of the catch of our local fishermen, which contributes to the high cost fish in the country.As a result, our most significant source of protein is reduced, contributing to food insecurity in the country.
This faulty agreement with Senegal is one of the numerous ways in which the fisheries sector has been mismanaged by this government. As has been well reported by the investigative reporters of The Republic magazine recently, arrangements with poorly regulated fish meal plants in the country have also contributed to the shortage of fish on the domestic market, as well as contributing to serious environmental degradation. The existence of this problem is a failure of leadership and it is unacceptable.