Fisheries and aquaculture: the blue protein under pressure

Africa today consumes less fish per capita than any other region in the world: 9.4 kg per person per year, against a global average of 20.7 kg (FAO, 2022). This is no statistical footnote. On a continent where fish remains, for tens of millions of coastal families, the first affordable source of animal protein, that figure reflects an access that is receding at the very moment the population is growing. And the FAO says it plainly: without production keeping pace with demography, this per capita consumption is set to fall further still. West Africa concentrates the bulk of the challenge, with three fisheries giants, overexploited coastal stocks and an aquaculture sector that is taking off but starting from almost nothing. The question is no longer whether the blue protein is under pressure, but whether states will finally decide to steer it with data rather than watch it erode.

Three giants, one resource, the same fragility

West Africa's fisheries geography is one of heavy concentration. In 2022, three countries captured the bulk of regional production: Nigeria, with roughly 1.04 million tonnes across all segments, Ghana (537,000 tonnes) and Senegal (508,000 tonnes), far ahead of Mali (119,000 tonnes) and the more modest coastal countries such as Benin (66,000 tonnes) or Togo (23,000 tonnes). This hierarchy blends two very different realities: rich maritime fronts, backed by the Canary Current among the most fish-rich on the planet, and inland river and lake fisheries for the landlocked countries.

But volume says nothing about the health of the system. Behind these tonnages lies the same fragility: a wild resource that is plateauing or declining, a demand that is accelerating, and access to the blue protein that is deteriorating in the very places where fishing remains economically central. The volume is reassuring; the trajectory is worrying.

African consumption, the lowest in the world, and it is receding

In 2022, global consumption of aquatic products reached an all-time high of 20.7 kg per capita, driven not by wild fishing but by aquaculture. Africa, for its part, is stuck at 9.4 kg, less than half that average. The gap is no trifle: it means that the continent most in need of a cheap protein consumes the least of it. And unlike the rest of the world, where availability is rising, the African trajectory points downward, as production fails to keep pace with population growth.

The case of Senegal puts a face on this decline. Per capita fish consumption there fell from 28.9 kg in 1999 to 17.8 kg in 2019, nearly halving in twenty years. This is not the result of a change in taste: fish remains at the heart of the Senegalese plate, from thiéboudienne to everyday meals. It is the sign that the resource is becoming scarce and that its price is moving out of reach of the most modest households, in a country where fishing nonetheless remains a pillar of the economy and of employment.

When a stock collapses, nutrition wavers

To grasp the stakes, one must measure just how much some populations depend on fish. Where, globally, fish accounts for about 15% of animal protein intake, it represents 30% in Senegal and as much as 67% in Ghana, one of the highest dependencies in Africa. In these countries, fish is not one food among others: it is the backbone of animal nutrition. A collapsing stock there does not merely trigger a price rise, but a direct nutritional shock, striking children and poor households first.

And that is precisely what is playing out in Ghana with the sardinella, the popular fish par excellence, the heart of subsistence fishing and of modest households' diets. The stock fell from 119,000 tonnes in 2006 to under 5,000 tonnes in 2017, a collapse of more than 95% in eleven years. This is not a fluctuation, it is a rupture. And it occurs in the country where dependence on fish is highest, which makes it the textbook case of the West African risk: the collision between a resource that is crumbling and a nutrition that depends on it almost entirely.

Where fish accounts for 67% of animal protein, the collapse of a stock is no longer a matter for fishers: it is a national nutritional shock.

Three drivers of the pressure, all documentable

The pressure on West Africa's blue protein is not inexplicable. It results from three forces that compound, and that serious measurement systems can track one after the other.

• Coastal overfishing. It depletes stocks of small pelagics, the heart of subsistence fishing and of accessible protein. The collapse of the Ghanaian sardinella, from 119,000 to under 5,000 tonnes in eleven years, is its most brutal illustration: too many boats for too few fish.
• Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. It captures a considerable share of catches and deprives six countries on the front (Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone) of about 2.3 billion dollars a year. Estimates vary widely depending on scope, but the order of magnitude runs to several billion dollars of diverted wealth each year.
• Demographic pressure. Demand for protein grows at the pace of one of the world's most dynamic populations, far faster than supply advances. Each year, the gap between what the region eats and what it produces widens a little more.

These three drivers share a feature that is decisive for public action: they are measurable. Fishing effort can be assessed, the state of stocks estimated season after season, illegal catches quantified through surveillance and data cross-referencing. The problem is not the absence of levers, but the absence, all too frequent, of the data that would make it possible to pull them in the right place at the right time.

Illegal fishing: several billion diverted every year

Among these drivers, IUU fishing deserves particular attention, because it is the one that diverts the most value without any resource having been managed in return. For the six countries of the north and central-west African front, annual losses are estimated at around 2.3 billion dollars, a range that, depending on the scopes considered, can rise appreciably higher. Behind this figure lie evaporated public revenues, processing jobs that are never created, and stocks plundered to the detriment of the artisanal fishers who, for their part, abide by the rules.

The divergence of estimates, from 2.3 to more than 3 billion, or even more across the entire region, is not a methodological detail: it is the symptom of a measurement deficit. A phenomenon that can only be quantified within a factor is a phenomenon that cannot be fought with precision. The first victory against illegal fishing is statistical: knowing, trawler by trawler and zone by zone, what is actually being taken.

The cost of inaction: Nigeria's import bill

The cost of inaction is read not only on the plate, but in the trade balance. Nigeria offers the most spectacular demonstration of it. The region's leading fisheries producer with roughly 1.04 million tonnes, the country remains far from meeting its own demand, estimated at around 3.6 million tonnes against domestic production of about 1.2 million tonnes. The country fills that gap by importing around 2.2 million tonnes of fish a year, depending on sources and years.

Every imported tonne is a tonne paid for in foreign currency, exposed to the volatility of world prices, and just as many fishing and processing jobs created elsewhere rather than at home. What holds for the Nigerian giant holds, at their own scale, for every country in the region: with stagnant production and rising demand, the adjustment happens mechanically through imports. The fish the region does not produce, it buys, and pays for twice, in foreign currency and in missed jobs.

Aquaculture, a real catch-up but concentrated and under-documented

Faced with wild catches hitting their biological ceiling, only one margin of growth now exists: aquaculture. And there, Africa is seeing the fastest growth in the world, plus 455% since 2000. The figure is impressive, but it must be read for what it is: a spectacular rise from a tiny base. The continent still accounts for only 1.9% of global aquaculture production. The momentum is real, the level remains marginal.

In West Africa, this catch-up is above all the business of two countries. Nigeria produced about 259,000 tonnes in 2022 and Ghana 92,000 tonnes, together nearly the whole of regional aquaculture. Behind them, volumes drop sharply: Mali (8,850 tonnes), Côte d'Ivoire (7,957 tonnes), Benin (2,520 tonnes), and the rest of the region barely visible. Senegal, though a major fishing nation, draws only 0.3% of its production from farming. In other words, the solution exists but is poorly distributed, and almost everywhere embryonic.

The contrast in trajectories is telling. Ghana raised its aquaculture production from 10,200 tonnes in 2010 to 92,135 tonnes in 2022, a clear and sustained take-off. Nigeria, long the leader, peaked at around 306,000 tonnes in 2016 before receding, illustrating that a sector can also seize up, often for lack of affordable feed and financing. Benin, for its part, shows the fragility of small producers: a peak above 4,300 tonnes in 2016, then a retreat to 2,520 tonnes in 2022. Without steering, a nascent sector advances in fits and starts and can go backward.

What the share of aquaculture in each country reveals

Set against total production, the place of aquaculture draws a map of uneven transitions. In Nigeria, it already represents nearly 25% of fisheries production, in Ghana about 17%, a sign that these countries have begun to substitute farming for a saturated wild fishery. Conversely, Senegal (0.3%), Niger (1%) or Burkina Faso (2.9%) remain almost entirely dependent on catches, and are therefore directly exposed to the slightest shock on stocks. Benin, at 3.8%, sits in this zone of vulnerability, with a largely untapped farming potential.

Jobs and revenues: a sector too strategic to be steered in the dark

Beyond the plate, fishing is an economic and social bedrock. In Senegal, it sustains around 600,000 people in direct and indirect jobs, or at least 15% of the working population, from artisanal fishers to fishmongers and processors. The split between direct and indirect jobs varies across sources, but the order of magnitude is a consensus: it is one of the country's leading employers. To touch the stocks is to touch hundreds of thousands of livelihoods.

In Mauritania, fishing is outright a macroeconomic pillar. It accounts for 4 to 6% of GDP and 30 to 50% of exports, and generated a record 759 million dollars in export revenue in 2022. A sector of such budgetary weight cannot be managed on rough estimates: every misjudgment about the state of stocks or about fishing effort translates into points of GDP and into social balances. It is precisely because these stakes are massive that reliable data ceases to be a technical luxury and becomes a condition of good governance.

What regional averages conceal

As always, the average is a trap. The figure of 9.4 kg of fish per capita for Africa erases extreme dependencies: from 30% of animal protein in Senegal to 67% in Ghana, the same fisheries crisis has an entirely different effect from one country to another. The same drop in catches translates into an inconvenience here and a severe nutritional shock there. Reasoning on the average leads to massively underestimating the risk in the most exposed countries.

The same blindness operates within each country. Behind a national production hide artisanal and industrial fisheries with opposite logics, coastal communities whose survival depends on a single stock, women who dominate processing and trading without appearing in employment statistics. The aggregate indicators of the World Bank and the FAO, invaluable for comparing countries, do not say where or who to act on within a territory. Without disaggregated data, by fishery, by zone, by gender, fisheries policy aims in the fog.

The CRAD angle: measure first, arbitrate afterwards

West Africa's blue protein does not lack potential, it lacks reliable data and monitoring-and-evaluation systems capable of arbitrating between three competing levers: reducing fishing effort to let stocks rebuild, organizing co-management with coastal communities, and accelerating a sustainable aquaculture. These trade-offs are heavy, socially and economically, and they can only be made fair by knowing precisely the state of stocks, the structure of employment and the geography of food dependence.

This is at the core of the work CRAD conducts for states and donors: turning sourced figures into sustainable management decisions. This requires geolocated field surveys, digital data collection that captures the activity of landings and markets in near real time, and monitoring repeated season after season, disaggregated by fishery and by gender. African aquaculture has jumped 455% in some twenty years, but it remains under-documented and concentrated in two countries: without fine measurement, neither its rise nor the rebuilding of wild stocks can be steered. Data is not the accessory of fisheries policy, it is its condition.

A real pressure, a steerable outcome

At bottom, West Africa's blue protein is not doomed: it is poorly managed. Wild catches have reached their biological ceiling, but aquaculture opens a margin that two countries have begun to exploit and that the others could follow. Demand is climbing, but it is predictable. Illegal fishing drains billions, but it is traceable. To each pressure corresponds a lever, and to each lever a piece of data that makes it possible to pull it in the right place.

To maintain, just through 2050, the per capita consumption level of 2022, already the lowest in the world, Africa will have to increase its supply of aquatic products by 74%. It is an immense challenge, but it is a challenge of management, not of fate. The countries that come through will be those that set themselves a target, measure their stocks and their sector rigorously, and sustain the effort over time. The blue protein will remain under pressure; the question is whether decision-makers will finally steer it with data, or continue to watch it erode.

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