Reviving East Africa’s fisheries

Community actions for a sustainable future

By Blue Ventures

March 26^th, 2025

The Zanzibar archipelago is famed for its turquoise waters, supporting bustling fisheries. One such fishery revolves around anchovies in Mkokotoni, where community-based fisheries management and governance reshape how fisher communities sustain their livelihoods.

Faki Juma and Mwanahamisi Kisukari are among the most experienced anchovy processors from Mkokotoni, with decades of experience between them. Each day, they brave the hot sun to sieve dry anchovies, known locally as dagaa, working alongside others to remove shells and stones.

A key step in their value-addition process includes sorting dried anchovies. As they rhythmically pour bucket loads of anchovies through sieves, ensuring only the best-quality catch makes it through, Faki explains how much they earn.

While a kilo of fried dagaa can fetch US$5 or more in the market, fishers here earn only an equivalent of US$2.5 per kilo due to limited value-addition efforts beyond parboiling, drying, and sieving before packaging in large sacks,” said Faki.

Meanwhile, dealers buy the dried dagaa in bulk at low prices, reaping the profits as they further process and package it for sale in supermarkets and fish shops. Mwanahamisi also shares similar views.

“We feel exploited when selling our dagaa to dealers because we know we can earn more. So I am keen to see everyone, especially women, earn better.” said Mwanahamisi.

In addition, the dagaa processors lack weighing machines, relying instead on buckets that provide only rough estimates of the catch, often leading to unfair pricing. Faki and his fellow fish processors are looking to adopt modern technology, such as modern boilers and fryers, to add value to their fish, enabling them to earn more.

Mwanahamisi uses a bucket modified out of a jerrycan to scoop dried anchovies.

The growing success of the fishery also brings several governance challenges, which the community is addressing through community patrolling. The patrolling team ensures fishers adhere to conservation area guidelines, raises awareness about sustainable fishing, and enforces penalties for offenders with support from local authorities.

Beyond low incomes, post-harvest losses pose another challenge for these fishers. Still, the lack of data on the catch that fails to meet the quality standard masks this challenge, yet data-driven insights would help the processors act fast to prevent these losses.

To tackle this, the community, supported by partner Mwambao, is working to improve anchovy handling and processing by following newly developed guidelines. By sharing these guidelines through participatory training, communities can increasingly adopt sustainable practices, ensuring the catch is well-preserved and allowing the fishers to earn better returns.

Ninety kilometres north of Zanzibar, the deep connections between these coastal waters become even more apparent in Tanga. Fish know no boundaries, and fishers rely on similar techniques across the region and face many of the same challenges.

Here, fishers from the Muheza district have yet to benefit from their fisheries fully, so they turned to their peers for solutions, as Kengela Mashimba, a Mwambao programme officer, explains;

“Following a peer learning visit to the Kilwa beach management unit (BMU) network in southern Tanzania, the community saw the benefit of (implementing) an octopus fishery closure, which is now in place.”

The new closure is within the Tanga Coelacanth Marine Park, where the Marine Parks Reserve Unit spent years focusing on enforcement (parks are designated no-take and no-fishing zones). However, positive collaborative efforts between the community and the park authorities have led to its recent reopening.

During the reopening, male gleaners opted to skin dive in search of octopus in the reserve's slightly deeper waters, while women gleaned on foot. The patrol team scouted the closure, ensuring everyone abided by the community-managed fishery regulations. The three-hour reopening session, which included a data collection exercise, yielded 405 kilos, an encouraging result for all involved.

Despite the impressive yield, the opening highlighted key lessons on fair access between male and female gleaners. In response, BMU members have committed to fostering fairness, the importance of which one woman gleaner explains,

“The octopus fishery closure is a great step in helping us to get better catch and earn more during opening. However, we need fairness during the opening since men can access deeper waters through swimming while women don’t.”

The community hopes to use lessons from the first closure opening to guide better fisheries management, ensuring everyone benefits, just like their peers in Kilwa.

Further south in Kisiju, the community is striving to secure its rights as stewards and managers of its fisheries. Here, fishers target shellfish such as prawns from brackish mangrove estuaries and finfish from clear open waters.

However, challenges persist. Waste disposal on beaches, illegal fishing, and widespread mangrove deforestation threaten livelihoods and marine ecosystems. Some in the community believe mangroves provide superior wood for construction, unaware of how their loss harms local fisheries. A few, however, are leading efforts to protect their ocean and advocate for sustainable fishing practices, as Rajabu Mndima, the BMU chair, explains;

“When we came up with the idea to set up a BMU to manage our fisheries better, the resistance by some was extreme, yet I did not give up because I knew this would benefit us.”

But Rajabu and his team are determined, and membership in the BMU is growing. With support from another partner, Sea Sense, and insights gained from a peer learning visit to Tanga, the community has replanted more than 1,500 mangrove seedlings to restore degraded areas.

These efforts, combined with three years of community-led patrols, are finally paying off, and the BMU is gaining the recognition it deserves, reinforcing its role in protecting local fisheries.

Along Kenya and Tanzania’s coastlines, communities are proving that, with the right support, they can shape the future of their fisheries while safeguarding the ocean that sustains them. The transformations taking place are a testament to the power of local leadership in securing livelihoods and marine ecosystems for generations to come.

____________________________________________________________________

This publication has been produced with financial support from Norway. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of Blue Ventures and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the Government of Norway.