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Fighting rural poverty is a multifaceted challenge. It is about increasing the incomes of poor rural people, and providing them with access to safe water, health and education. It is about transferring knowledge and know-how. And equally important, it is about implementing policies that empower people to overcome poverty themselves. An IFAD-funded project is making headway on all these fronts in Mozambique.

Credits: Bernard Adrien The IFAD-funded Sofala Bank Artisanal Fisheries Project focuses on the narrow strip of coast facing the Sofala Bank and on its fishing waters

The Sofala Bank is a long, narrow stretch of land running 950 kilometres along the Indian Ocean and 20 kilometres inland, half way through Mozambique. It covers the country’s eastern provinces of Nampula, Zambezia and Sofala. About 26,000 households, or 130,000 people, work in small-scale fisheries that provide them with only scarce and erratic income. They are among the poorest people in the country, and are therefore especially vulnerable to natural disasters or other crises.

By the late 1990s, the fishing communities operated in a difficult regulatory environment that offered no protection to poor and vulnerable people.

Credits: Bernard Adrien

The communities were isolated, and with very few roads leading to market towns, the population had limited access to markets and financial services. The post-harvest technologies they used to preserve their catch were outdated, and they had little access to safe water and to basic social services such as health and sanitation. In addition, they were poorly organized at the grass-roots level.

But the seven-year Sofala Bank Artisanal Fisheries Project, launched in 2002, is gradually improving life for those fishing communities, helping them gain access to markets and credit, financing new investments and technologies, and improving local social services.

Visionary leadership influences policy

The project is implemented by the Instituto de Desenvolvimento de Pesca de Pequena Escala (IDPPE), which is under the authority of the Ministry of Fisheries. IDPPE is in a good position to lobby on behalf of artisanal fishers and advocate for their cause.

Credits: Bernard Adrien The project sensitized fishers about better ways to manage their resources by using appropriate technologies, techniques and tools

“The partnership between IDPPE and IFAD is an ideal alliance,” says Alessandro Marini, IFAD’s country programme manager for Mozambique. "We share the same vision and approach. We work with the communities to understand their needs, constraints and challenges.” Thanks to a people-centred approach, IDPPE has helped fishers improve their livelihoods in a number of ways.

Before the Sofala Bank project helped change things, fishery regulations allowed both industrial and semi-industrial fishers to fish as close as one nautical mile from the shore. This meant that trawlers could pass over and destroy the nets laid by artisanal fishers.

A fisher's net is a key asset, almost a lifeline. The one-mile regulation had a devastating impact on the livelihoods of fishers, including those who cast beach seines – large fishnets that hang vertically – from the shore.

Credits: Roxanna Samii

Through their advocacy work, the IDPPE team managed to change national maritime fishery regulations. They lobbied with the Ministry of Fisheries to draw attention to the fact that the narrow, one-mile fishing zone was disastrous for artisanal fishing.

“In the beginning we had a tough time convincing the authorities,” says project coordinator Rui Falc?o. “The fishing industry rejected our claim, telling the authorities that artisanal fishers deliberately used old nets, and then asked for full compensation.”

Credits: Bernard Adrien

The project worked with communities and systematically documented cases in which fishers’ nets had been destroyed by trawlers. This perseverance led to a change in policy.

The Ministry of Fisheries revised maritime fishery regulations and institutionalized a national policy that extended the fishing zone limit for industrial and semi-industrial trawlers to three miles from the shore.

“This change in policy has improved the livelihoods of approximately 100,000 artisanal fishers at the national level and 26,000 artisanal fishers in the Sofala Bank,” says Falc?o. “Fishing the open seas is an opportunity to catch high-value fish.” 

Equipping fishers for the open sea

Once this hurdle was overcome, the next challenge was to equip artisanal fishers to allow them to fish in the open seas instead of inshore. They needed better boats, different fishing gear, new fishing skills, and improved on-board preservation methods so they could sell the catch on the market at its real value.

Credits: Bernard Adrien The project worked with fishing communities to raise awareness about the importance of improving preservation technology

The project introduced fishers to appropriate technologies, techniques and tools that help them to better manage their resources. Fishers now know that using mosquito nets instead of regular fishing nets can damage marine resources because the finer nets trap undersized and young fish.

“Fishing is risky not only in terms of securing catch, but also because fishers are at the mercy of the weather, which is even more uncertain now as a result of climate change,” says Falc?o. “When fishers venture further out to sea, they need safe boats. They also need to learn how to ‘read’ weather signals to know when it is safe to go out to fish in the open seas.”

If bad weather hits when they are at sea, they risk losing their fishing gear and losing their bearings, too, he says. “We are conducting safety awareness campaigns to sensitize fishers to the fact that they cannot go out into the open sea with dug-out canoes.”

Credits: Bernard Adrien

The project also strengthened fishing organizations by helping participants establish community fisheries councils.

Falc?o and IDPPE were aware that to really make the councils effective, they needed to be full-fledged legal entities, capable of exercising power and influencing policy. Passionately pursuing the matter, they successfully obtained legal status for the councils.

“Now the government and fishing authorities recognize that fishing councils play a crucial role in managing fishery resources, fishers have a voice, they are fully involved with fisheries management at local and national levels, and are influencing decisions and policy,” says Falc?o.

Learning how to better preserve fish

Credits: Bernard Adrien

Industrial fishers go out to sea in boats that measure 20 metres or more, and they freeze their catch on board. Semi-industrial fishers with 10- to 20-metre boats use ice to preserve fish on board.

Both industrial and semi-industrial fishers concentrate their activities in specific areas and have access to appropriate infrastructure. 

Credits: Bernard Adrien

Now that the area fished exclusively by artisanal fishers has been extended, they can catch high-value species in the open sea up to three miles off the coast, and they no longer have to compete for space with industrial and semi-industrial fishers.

To enable artisanal fishers to preserve their catch, the project piloted the use of small ice plants. Operating in areas without electricity, the units rely on fuel-powered generators that are expensive to run.

“Using ice all along the value chain means fishers can sell the product at a higher price, have more clients, increase incomes and improve livelihoods,” says Falc?o.

Credits: Bernard Adrien

The challenge is to keep the ice factories going. Presently, the cost of running the ice-making units is relatively high because they are not eligible for any kind of fuel tax relief. IDPPE will work with authorities to extend fuel tax relief to small ice-making enterprises.

“This will make investment in ice factories more attractive,” Falc?o says. “The next challenge is to encourage banks and credit institutions to extend credit for setting up ice production units.”

New battles loom

One new challenge for Falc?o and IDPPE is to circumvent the negative impact of a regulation that closes the fishing season for a period of three and a half months every year.

Credits: Bernard Adrien

The big players claim that the activities of artisanal fishers encroach on the catch of industrial and semi-industrial fishers.

Falc?o and IDPPE experts argue instead that there is no evidence that artisanal fishers are seriously harming the resource base and that there are no grounds for imposing the three-and-a-half-month closed season.

They are preparing to fight this new battle, persuading policymakers to revoke the closed-season regulation.

“In past years we managed to get a waiver in Nampula, but it was revoked recently,” says Falc?o. “The closed season has a negative social and economic impact on the fishers. Because they are unable to fish, their protein intake decreases and they lose their only source of income. We hope the authorities will reconsider this regulation and apply it only to industrial and semi-industrial fishing.”

Planning for the future

There is still much more to do, says Falc?o. His vision is that one day all the fishing communities will have access to safe water, education, health, roads, electricity from the grid and communication tools such as cell phones.

Credits: Bernard Adrien The project works to strengthen fishers’ organizations so that they can better negotiate with policymakers and become influential leaders

And the project team is striving to make the fishers’ organizations stronger so that they are able and equipped to negotiate with policymakers and become influential opinion leaders.

“We've come a long way in advocating for and implementing pro-poor policies, but we are only halfway along in our journey,” says Falc?o. “We still need to implement more policies to improve the assets and capabilities of poor rural people and build the capacity of local organizations and communities so that they can advocate for themselves.”

Source: IFAD