Egypt hosts Second Meeting of the Advisory Council of the African Fisheries Reform Mechanism

The meeting applauded the centres of excellence for their leadership in generating policy briefs as outputs of the consultancies they are involved in.

The Second Meeting of the Advisory Council of the African Fisheries Reform Mechanism (AFRM) took place in the Safir Hotel in Cairo, Arab Republic of Egypt, on January 25 and 26, 2023. The meeting was organised by the African Union- Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) in collaboration with the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) and the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt as part of the second phase of a fisheries governance project funded by the European Union (FishGov 2).

The meeting's overarching purpose was to facilitate the 2nd Meeting of the AFRM Advisory Council, as outlined in the Fish Gov 2 Project, and to assess the knowledge products produced by the Aquaculture and Governance Working Groups, which met on January 23 and 24, 2023. Other aims of the gathering included:

i.    Identifying and establishing linkages between the AFRM Advisory Council and the AU-COEs.

ii.    Further elaboration and endorsement of the four policy briefs;

iii.    Identify priority areas and action points for further consideration by the different policy structures of the AFRM.

The technical session included the presentation of Draft Policy Notes developed by AFRM Working Groups and synthesised by Centers of Excellence. Dr. Amadou Tall, Team Leader for PESCAO/ECOWAS, facilitated this workshop. The Advisory Committee was provided with four policy briefs for endorsement:

i.    Aquaculture policy brief on Sustainable Cage Aquaculture for food security and profit in Africa was presented by Dr. Winnie Nkalubo, Director of NAFIRRI.

ii.    The Policy Brief on Tilapia Farming: Adapting Egypt Success to the rest of Africa was presented by Prof El’Naggar Gamal.

iii.    The policy brief on priority instruments for domestication in African Union Member States for improved fisheries governance was presented by Prof. Denis Aheto (ACECoR).

iv.    The policy brief on the Mechanism for effective participation in global fora was presented by Prof Denis Aheto, World Bank Africa Centre of Excellence in Coastal , University of Cape Coast.

The Advisory Council members pondered over the presentations, provided input, and made recommendations. The meeting applauded the Aquaculture and Governance Working Groups of the AFRM and Centers of Excellence for developing the four policy briefs and made suggestions for further content refinement. Once complete, the policy briefs will be shared with all Centres of Excellence, partners, and subject matter experts for additional insights and quality assurance before being made available to the public.

The meeting applauded the centres of excellence for their leadership in generating policy briefs as outputs of the consultancies they are involved in. The Team was encouraged to take the suggestions seriously in order to carry out the project's activities without any hitches after the meeting.

There were 36 people in attendance, representing the following organisations during the workshop: Ministers and Representatives from the AU Member State, Regional Economic Communities (RECs): Regional Fisheries Bodies; Continental Non state Actor Platforms; EU funded regional projects; such as ECOFISH, TRUEFISH, PESCAO, and the African Union Centers of Excellence (Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Science, University of Cape Coast (Ghana); Africa Centre of Excellence in Coastal Resilience at the (ACECOR) at the University of Cape Coast (Ghana); National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFIRRI), Uganda; Rhodes University (South Africa), University of Ibadan (Nigeria); University of Suez (Egypt); Central Laboratory for Aquaculture Research (CLAR) (Egypt); Académie Régionale des Sciences et Techniques de la Mer (ARSTM) (Cote D’Ivoire); L'Agence Gabonaise d'Etudes et d'Observation spatiale (AGEOS) (Gabon); Independent Experts: Prof Andrew Baio, Prof Adel Shaheen, Prof El’Naggar Gamal, Technical Partners: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Worldfish and GIZ- Western Indian Ocean Governance Initiative (GIZ-WIOGI) and AU-IBAR staff members. Institut des Arts et métiers nautique de limbe (LINAFI), (Cameroon) was absent with apologies.

Cassien Tribunal Aungane, Editor