By John O. Oladipo, NLAI Associate

In a region where the ocean is a vital source of food, jobs, and economic stability, West African nations are strengthening their response to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUUF), a practice that costs Africa an estimated $11 billion annually. That eye-watering figure was cited during the Obangame Express 2025 maritime security exercise, which took place in May last year and united over 20 West and Central African nations with U.S. and European partners in joint patrols and vessel boardings to combat IUUF and other maritime crimes across the Gulf of Guinea.

A similar region-wide approach was adopted during the Exercise Grand African NEMO 2025 in November, where nine African and seven partner navies deployed 55 naval units and 11 aircraft in joint operations across the vast maritime area stretching from Senegal to Angola.

Across the region, there is also a growing recognition that intelligence-led approaches are essential to countering IUU fishing. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) platforms enable authorities to track vessels that disable their automatic identification systems (AIS), uncover hidden ownership networks, and gather evidence for prosecution. Such joint exercises provide the perfect opportunity to test these emerging approaches,

For policymakers, investors, and development partners, these very welcome regional efforts go beyond protecting marine life. They lay the groundwork for a truly sustainable Blue Economy, one that safeguards critical ecosystems while creating fair and lasting economic opportunities for coastal communities.

Africa as a continent, is placing increasing importance on the Blue Economy, which refers to the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and job creation while preserving the health of marine ecosystems. In West Africa, where fisheries support millions of livelihoods, IUUF directly undermines this potential. Below, we look at sets of measures being taken by two nations – Ghana and Senegal – to try and counter IUUF effectively.

The Ghana approach – policy, tech, training, and co-management

Ghana is, first of all, advancing policy reforms to support sustainable fisheries management. In early 2025, the government validated a National Marine Spatial Planning Framework, an important tool for managing competing uses of ocean space. Additionally, Ghana’s Cabinet approved the establishment of the country’s first Marine Protected Area last October, a move aligned with SDG 14 (Life Below Water) and supported by research indicating that well-managed protected areas can help rebuild fish stocks. Fisheries Minister Emelia Arthur pledged greater transparency, endorsing the Global Charter for Fisheries Transparency, a move hailed as a “landmark statement”.

Ghana is also active on the tech front. In November last year, it launched advanced navigational simulators at its Naval Training Command in Nutekpor, which will strengthen officers’ ability to operate safely and effectively in complex coastal waters where IUUF, smuggling and other maritime crimes overlap. Funded by Denmark to the tune of USD 370,000, the facility’s capabilities were directly linked by a government spokesperson to the development of “thriving fisheries” that can help to safeguard the nation’s Blue Economy future.

Similar targeted capacity building is also taking place further afield. Over a three-week period in October and November, Ghana sent officials to an intensive fisheries-law training course in Malta. The course, led by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), focused on evidence collection, chain-of-custody, vessel inspection powers and prosecution strategies, directly addressing one of the main repeat challenges facing many coastal states’ responses to the illicit activities of industrial IUU fleets.

Often, inadequate enforcement frameworks have been blamed for allowing IUUF practices to persist, and Ghana is also taking a technological approach to supporting more robust measures there. The government is implementing electronic monitoring systems on industrial vessels, drawing on lessons from countries like India, where such technology is showing signs of improve compliance and transparency.

Governance systems themselves are also being reviewed. The YouTube video “IUU Fishing in Ghana’s Coastal Fisheries: A Fisher’s Perspective,” highlights how Ghana is turning to co-management to support the tackling of IUU fishing and other fisheries activities. The speaker – Mr.  Nana Jojo Solomon from the Ghana National Canoe Fishermen Council – explains that traditional top-down regulation failed because laws were designed in Accra but did not match realities in fishing communities, leaving 14,000 artisanal canoes effectively unregulated. In response, Mr. Solomon says, Ghana has enacted a national co-management policy and established small pelagic management committees, giving fishers a direct role in setting rules, monitoring behaviour, and restoring depleted stocks.

This bottom-up shift is presented as a viable way to reverse stock collapse and rebuild trust between regulators and coastal communities as, left unchecked, illegal gears, chemicals, light fishing, juvenile harvests and unreported catches can collapse small pelagics and erode many aspects of coastal life – from daily incomes to food security, community cohesion and public health.

While only presenting a high-level snapshot of Ghana’s efforts to counter IUUF, these initiatives show how complex the fight against IUUF has become, and why no single intervention can succeed on its own. Ghana is attempting to advance policy reform, ecosystem protection, surveillance technology, judicial capacity, and community-led governance simultaneously because each addresses a different part of the problem: a challenging enforcement environment, complex spatial planning, opaque supply chains, and a potential disconnect between national rules and local realities.

The Senegal approach – transparency rules

Like Ghana, Senegal is pursuing a transparency-and-technology-driven approach in an attempt to disrupt the opaque supply chains and operational blind-spots that can enable IUUF. In February 2025, the Pew Charitable Trusts reported how researcher Dr Dyhia Belhabib is using vessel tracking and supply-chain analytics to map industrial-fleet movements and then work with local communities to enhance their understanding of IUUF.

At a national strategic level, in March 2025 Senegal hosted a high-level workshop under the three-year Oceans 5-supported project focusing on IUUF, bringing together national agencies from the Port of Dakar, the Navy, Maritime Affairs National Agency, and other stakeholders. Among key outcomes were the finalisation of a draft inter-agency memorandum of understanding (MoU) to formalise collaboration in monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS); the launch of a real-time communications platform to share vessel and port-state risk information; and hands-on training for port inspectors in the Vessel Viewer mobile application developed jointly by Global Fishing Watch (GFW) and Trygg Mat Tracking to trace vessel identity, behaviour and licensing. The initiative was explicitly designed to address longstanding gaps in Senegal’s enforcement architecture, where port and fisheries units wanted greater collaboration, and signals a shift toward integrated intelligence-sharing, technology-enabled inspections, and institutional cooperation as core tools in the fight against IUUF.

Earlier, in 2024, Senegal’s decision to publish, for the first time, a full list of vessels authorised to fish in its waters was supported and publicly endorsed by GFW, which described the move as “courageous”. The release, covering 132 Senegal-flagged vessels and 19 foreign-licensed vessels, provided inspectors, civil society, and neighbouring states with a clear baseline against which to detect unlicensed or falsely documented vessels operating in Senegal’s waters. GFW emphasised that this kind of open, government-validated vessel list is a cornerstone of modern IUUF deterrence, enabling real-time cross-checks with AIS behaviour, licence record,s and port-state declarations.

Senegal is supporting these approaches with further capacity development. In early October 2025, it sent fisheries inspectors to Côte d’Ivoire for an exchange programme to promote the sharing of best practices in Monitoring, Control and Surveillance (MCS), supported by multiple regional partners. Designed to strengthen capacity to detect and deter IUUF and other fisheries governance activities, the three-day event included a focus on legislation, standard operating procedures, inspection protocols, and the use of digital tools. In more general terms, the initiative was also intended to foster closer ties between the two nations, to smooth the way for more enhanced collaboration on vessel tracking and licensing.

Taken together, Senegal’s recent efforts point to a deliberate shift toward a more transparent, data-driven, and regionally integrated approach to tackling IUUF. By combining supply-chain analytics, public vessel-authorisation lists, inter-agency information-sharing systems and hands-on digital inspection tools, Senegal is working hard to close the gaps that allow illicit operators to move undetected between ports, jurisdictions and markets.

As with Ghana, the emerging top-line lesson is that sustainable fisheries governance in West Africa hinges on holistic, interoperable systems—where transparency, technology and cooperation are as central to resilience as ecological management itself.

Looking Ahead

The experiences of West African countries bordering the Gulf of Guinea illustrate that, while their specific challenges differ, they all depend on enhanced situational awareness, institutional reform and regional cooperation to secure their Blue Economies. These efforts align with global priorities, including the UN Decade of Ocean Science and the implementation of the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, which aims to curb public funding that contributes to overfishing.

The Obangame Express and Grand African NEMO exercises underline the importance of building regional capacity in this area. They provide a platform for navies and coast guards to test joint monitoring and response protocols, strengthening the practical implementation of maritime security frameworks such as the Yaoundé Code of Conduct. The continued rollout of the West Africa Sustainable Ocean Programme also provides further opportunities to align regional action with international finance and technical support.

For development partners and investors, supporting these initiatives means more than funding patrol boats or surveillance technology. It requires investing in governance systems, transparent licensing, robust monitoring, and community-inclusive planning, that make sustainable ocean management possible.

Reviewing the examples in this article, Lee Hardy OBE, NLAI Associate Director and leader of the company’s Verumar programme of Maritime Domain Awareness services, commented: “In a context where collapsing stocks, transboundary species and entrenched illegal practices interact, a holistic view is required. The multi-layered approaches of Ghana and Senegal reflect an important truth: sustainable fisheries cannot be restored by enforcement or technology alone, but only through integrated management that aligns national policy, community action and regional cooperation around the shared goal of rebuilding coastal ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend on them.”

As West African nations work to turn the tide on illegal fishing, their progress offers a broader lesson: the complexity of these activities show that the future of the Blue Economy depends not only on protecting marine resources but on building the trust, transparency, and cooperation that make such protection possible.

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In the next article of this Pulse series focusing on IUUF, we will look at particular problems associated with the illicit activities of foreign-flagged vessels in West African waters.

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