Foreign fishing companies strip Ghanaian waters bare

ACCRA: Ghana’s coast used to offer the richest fishing in Africa. Now the country has to import protein-rich food from abroad because international companies are stripping the waters bare.

Jerome closes the door, fearful of being overheard saying what everyone knows: his village is only just clinging on to life, like the once-plentiful fish stocks that sustained it and other coastal communities in Ghana.

“They grab our fish. If that continues, we won’t have any fish anymore,” says Jerome, a man in his mid-forties who would only use a false name.

By “they” he means the giant industrial trawlers that come from Asia and Europe. Overfishing there means they have had to cast their nets further afield, often along the coast of West Africa.

Some of them come under EUsubsidised “fisheries partnership agreements” with the government. Others come without a permit.

Apart from jobs on the ships, nothing goes to the local economy or people. The yield and profit all go abroad, critics say. – Sapa-dpa