African Fisheries : Major Trends and Diagnostic of the 20th Century

The marine fisheries production from African coastal countries, combined with that of freshwater production of the continent is estimated to be 6 millions metric tons, corresponding only 5 % of the total world production. Africa's contribution to fisheries products (1,5 %) is insignificant compared to that of world commerce which is around 44 millions tons. This deplorable situation is due to a certain number of problems which include s among others, the relative biogenic poverty of African waters, the exploitation of African waters by foreign vessels, the total lack of catches effected by the African vessels out of their regional boundaries, the lack of knowledge on the mastering of commercialisation and on veritable commercial politics of fisheries products, including quality assurance. In addition to this, the almost inexistence of the aquaculture in the sub-Saharan countries. This paper analyses the African fisheries in the whole continent and presents the general characters, notably its evolution, fisheries resources, valorisation and consumption of fisheries products. The global analysis made here accords a priority to markets as well as to the framework of contribution of these products and tries, at the end of the 20th century, to present some trends. Facing the globalisation phenomena, how will African fisheries producers be challenged in the new millennium? This continental level analysis brings out field application and some different development perspectives for both small scale and industrial fisheries sub-sectors

Description of the genus Alona Baird, 1843 (Crustacea: Anomopolda: Chydoridae) from the rainforest of Cameroon, Central-West Africa

No Abstract. JCAS Vol. 6 (2) 2006: pp. 81-9

Marine fisheries management in Cameroon : overview and perspectives for improvement of the survey system and data collection

Since 1982, a data-collection system has been in place in Cameroon to obtain statistics for the small-scale marine fisheries sector. Surveys have been conducted in an attempt to determine the impact of fishing effort on the resources, and data collected refer mostly to catch and effort. Although such data may be used for analysis of resource dynamics, they are generally inappropriate for analysing fishing activity in terms of the dynamics of exploitation. The latter analysis is necessary in order to address questions on the developmental capacity of the fisheries sector. With such a collection system, the main sources of uncertainty come from a lack of knowledge of the socio-economic dynamics of fishing communities, including the dynamics of the fishing fleet and technology. Data on those factors are needed to evaluate the impact of resource state and of the socio-economics of the operation on the fishing mortality. More information is therefore needed and a more systematic approach to data collection has been taken. This new approach and its implementation are discussed, taking into consideration catch-effort data as well as the new surveys on fishing units and socio-economic dynamics. These last two include information on fishing strategies (through surveying a fixed set of fishing units), and processing and trade of fisheries products (through a sample of processors). Some results obtained from these data are presented, and their usefulness for fisheries development and management is discussed. (Résumé d'auteur