In Ghana, the people who know the sea best are being put at the centre of saving it. The Small-Scale Fisheries Academy — a community dialogue platform run by the Canoe and Fishing Gear Owners Association of Ghana (CAFGOAG) — is set to grow from 8 fishing communities to 20 across the country’s four coastal regions, giving fishers themselves the lead in fixing the problems facing their industry.
The message from the academy’s leaders is blunt: outside solutions imposed on fishing villages keep failing, because they never had the fishers’ buy-in. The academy flips that model — fishers identify the challenges, fishers design the answers.
At a Glance
| Detail | What is happening |
|---|---|
| Initiative | Small-Scale Fisheries Academy, Ghana |
| Run by | Canoe and Fishing Gear Owners Association of Ghana (CAFGOAG), in collaboration with Mundus Maris |
| Supported by | Blue Ventures, Ghana’s Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture, and the Fisheries Commission |
| Expansion planned | From 8 fishing communities to 20, across all four coastal regions |
| Latest session | 35 participants, Elmina, 28 September – 2 October 2026 |
| First session | Winneba, June 2026 |
| Goal | Community-led co-management of fisheries resources |
“The solution is with the fishers”
CAFGOAG General Secretary Kenneth Arthur said the expansion aims to give fishing communities greater ownership of efforts to protect and sustain Ghana’s fisheries resources. Currently the academy dialogue runs in eight communities; the plan is to extend it to 20, and eventually to every landing beach in the country.
“As fishers, we believe that the solution is with the fishers; hence, there’s a need to identify all the major stakeholders, all the major players, to come to a roundtable, dialogue and come out with solutions to these numerous problems that we are currently facing in the industry,” Arthur said.
He argued that interventions designed by external organisations without enough community involvement often fail to win the commitment needed for lasting results. The academy, by contrast, equips fishers with the knowledge and skills to identify challenges and develop their own interventions — and facilitators carry the lessons back to communities through regular engagement.
One practical difference: the academy teaches with visuals and drawings, not jargon. “Fishers are not used to, in quotes, big English,” Arthur explained. “If you tell the canoe owner or the fish processor or the crew member that this is a canoe and it is spelt C-A-N-O-E, the person may not understand. But when you draw the canoe, the fisher will be able to identify that, yes, this is a canoe. And that is the difference this Small-Scale Fisheries Academy is bringing on board.”
35 leaders trained in Elmina
The academy’s second session brought together 35 participants from Ghana’s four coastal regions — Western, Central, Greater Accra and Volta — in Elmina from Monday 28 September to Friday 2 October 2026.
Building on the inaugural session in Winneba in June 2026, the Elmina session strengthened participants’ skills in community facilitation, dialogue, leadership and participatory planning. The idea is that trained local facilitators can then bring together everyone in a fishing community — chief fishermen, canoe owners, women fish processors, traders, crew members and other fisheries professionals — to discuss challenges, agree shared priorities and co-create solutions.
The academy is built on a co-management approach: fishers are recognised as critical partners in tackling the industry’s problems, not just as people rules are imposed on.
A warning from Newfoundland
Dr Cornelia Nauen, president of international non-profit Mundus Maris, called for stronger support for Ghana’s small-scale fishing communities, warning that overfishing and destructive practices threaten the sustainability of the country’s marine resources.
She pointed to the collapse of cod stocks off Newfoundland in Canada as a warning of what happens when fishing exceeds the ocean’s capacity to replenish itself. “We want to learn those lessons and regenerate the wonderful resources we have, so that the cake that can be distributed is bigger, not shrinking, and we do not fight over bread crumbs,” she said.
Dr Nauen said Ghana could build a more resilient fisheries sector if the knowledge of fishing communities was properly harnessed and combined with scientific and technical expertise — exactly what the academy is designed to do. Beyond protecting fish stocks, she said sustainable management could bring wider gains for coastal communities: improved sanitation, better schools, healthcare and stronger local businesses.
Women: “the backbone” of the trade
Dr Nauen also stressed the central role of women in Ghana’s fisheries — in fish processing, marketing and financing fishing expeditions, and in making sure trade income supports families.
“The market is very much in the hands of the women. They are very careful in ensuring the processing, safe marketing, reinvesting and pre-financing the fishing trips. They are really the backbone,” she said. Giving women space to share their experiences and influence decisions, she added, is essential to sustainable development — and supporting both men and women strengthens household incomes across coastal communities.
Official backing: co-management under Act 1146
Central Regional Director of Fisheries Emmanuel Kwame Dovlo endorsed the academy, describing it as an important platform for strengthening community participation in managing Ghana’s fisheries resources. He said the initiative reflects the co-management approach advocated by the Fisheries Commission and provided for under the country’s fisheries regulatory framework, Act 1146.
“We are engaging the fishers and the community in the management of the fisheries. We are seeing them as core owners and a core part of the process. In this way, we are able to engage them actively to manage their resources successfully,” Dovlo said. He urged academy facilitators to keep community-level engagement going beyond the training sessions, and stressed combining indigenous knowledge with scientific expertise.
“A game changer” — if it keeps going
CAFGOAG National Administrator Kwesi Benyi Randolph Johnson, himself a participant and regional facilitator, said the academy is changing sustainable fisheries advocacy by shifting it from externally driven interventions to a participatory model with fishers at the centre — addressing declining fish stocks and other threats.
“We see this as a game changer in sustainable fisheries because a lot of people from the communities are participating. You see the youth, women and men, chiefs and chief fishermen all taking part,” he said. With continued engagement and adequate resources, he said, the initiative could deliver significant improvements in Ghana’s fisheries within the next three to four years.
According to CAFGOAG, the expected long-term impact is twofold: improved livelihoods for fishing communities and better protection of marine resources. Stronger community participation, it says, can promote responsible fishing practices, encourage compliance with regulations, address local conflicts and support the recovery and sustainability of fish stocks.
Why this matters beyond Ghana
Small-scale fishers land a large share of the fish eaten in West Africa, yet they are often the last consulted when rules are written. Ghana’s academy is a test of a simple idea: that the people who live with the consequences of fisheries decisions should be the ones shaping them. If the expansion from 8 to 20 communities delivers the ownership its leaders promise, it could become a model for fishing nations facing the same squeeze — shrinking stocks, industrial pressure, and communities demanding a real say.
Sources
- MyJoyOnline (Ebenezer Afanyi Dadzie), “Small-Scale Fisheries Academy to expand to 20 communities as stakeholders push for greater fisher participation” — all figures, dates, names and quotes in this post are taken from this report.
Note: The images in this post are illustrations created for this article, not photographs from the academy sessions.