The low fish consumption in Africa
Fish contains important micronutrients such as iron, zinc, omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins and therefore plays an irreplaceable role in securing sufficient and nutritious food12. In Africa, fish is a highly valuable dietary item and available at affordable prices to the rural poor in many areas. However, fish consumption in Africa was merely 9.9 kg per capita in 201710, which is far below the 12.7kg a year recommended by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for health reasons13 and only half of the world average 19.9 kg per capita10 (Fig.1a), while close to the average (9.3 kg per capita) of the low-income food-deficit countries10. These numbers do not reflect the considerable regional differences, for example, from approximately 12 kg per capita in West Africa to 5 kg per capita in East Africa, but overall, the continent has the lowest per capita consumption of fish8. The great disparity between Africa and the world average had existed since 1961 when such data was first collected by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and has widened over the last decades (Fig.1a).
What are the constraints leading to the low fish consumption: insufficient production, cultural and traditional perceptions, or distributional constraints? What can be done to raise fish supply for maximum social, economic and health benefits while maintaining environmental sustainability?
Import-supplemented fish consumption
Fish production in Africa has developed dramatically, increasing 11 times from 1.1 mt in 1950 to 13.3 mt in 201710, with an accelerating increase rate over the last three decades (Fig.1b). Why has the increased production not led to a similar rise in fish consumption, which only doubled over the same period (Fig.1a)? A central cause of this disparity in growth between production and consumption must be the fast-growing human population on the continent (increased 5 times from 1950 to 20174), but resource allocation from fish production to end uses has also played an important role.
Fish is a healthy, highly pursued food on the international market. Developing countries frequently export high-value seafood for income and hard currency that is needed for, amongst other purposes, importing high-end services and technologies for national development, but
Fig.1 Major factors affecting the current state of African fisheries. a. Comparison of fish consumption between Africa and the world; b. The production history of capture fishery and aquaculture in Africa; c. The net import (import minus export) of fish products to African countries; d. The total amount of fish taken by FVF in African waters through various agreements that are generally legal and reported; e. Percentages of overfished stocks in the world marine fisheries and waters surrounding Africa with the blue shadows indicating one standard error of the mean. For data sources, see Methods.
import cheap products in return to meet their domestic demands (Fig.S4). As a result, nearly 40% of the world fish and fish products are internationally traded, accounting for about 70% of global import value in 2018 with a clear flow of net trade from the developing to developed economies10. Against this global trend, Africa has seen more imports than export from 1961 to 2017, with a peak of 2.5 mt in net imports in 2010 (Fig.1c), i.e., 25% of fish consumed in Africa were imported. The import of fish consumes valuable hard currencies, of which developing countries often face a shortage, and import price is usually higher than that of the same product from the domestic market. Therefore, the net import at a relatively high cost in Africa must reflect high demand, and the low current consumption is likely to be constrained by supply shortages.
Foreign fishing impeding seafood supply and fishery sustainability
African coastal waters include some of the world’s most abundant fishing grounds14. Due to the lack of capacity and infrastructure supporting the exploitation of fish resources before the 1980s, non-coastal states (mostly developed countries) often fished in African waters, largely free or by various agreements after EEZs were declared. The total catch of these foreign vessels fishing (FVF) in African waters reached a peak of 4 million tonnes (Fig.1d), more than the 3.7 mt caught by African fleets in 1977 (Fig.1b). The total catch taken out of the African EEZs by FVF stayed high until 1990 and since then has remained at about 1.5 mt (25% of the reported catch), after a sharp drop in the early 1990s (Fig.1d).
In addition to legal FVF agreed by African countries, another source of fishing pressure is illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing. IUU fishing is widespread across the world, but Northwest Africa recorded the highest level in the Eastern Central Atlantic in the early 2000s15. The catch of IUU fishing in Africa has fluctuated around the average of 3.5 million tonnes a year since 1967 (Fig.S2) and foreign vessels contributed about 48% of the total IUU catch in 2017 (Fig.S3).
The harvested productivity of Africa’s fishery resources in relation to their potential productivity is also an essential factor. Legal African fishers and fleets, FVF and IUU fishing in African waters together exert intense pressure on fishery resources. The FAO16–19 estimates that the percentage of overfished stocks in waters surrounding Africa has been increasing continuously since 1974 and has been higher than the world average in most years (Fig.1e). Overfishing does not only impair the growth and reproductive capacity of fish stock to replenish itself and threaten or destroy fishery sustainability but also typically reduces biodiversity and causes adverse impacts on the functioning and services of marine ecosystems. Therefore, SDG Target 14.41 requires all States to rebuild overfished populations through effective management for the best balance between sustainable use and conservation of fishery resources.
The gap to meet fish demand
Africa’s per capita fish consumption was 9.9 kg in 2017 – the lowest among continents. Even this low consumption was achieved by importing 4.3 million tonnes of fish from abroad. Market demand will expand in the future mainly due to the fast-increasing human population and economic development and consequently, shortages will increase if supply does not increase accordingly20. To provide insights on the practical strategies and pathways to strengthen fishery contribution to food security and hunger elimination in Africa, here we examine the potential future perspectives to maintain African fish consumption at the 2017 level by 2030. To be conservative, the upward pressure potentially caused by economic growth will not be considered here.
The United Nations4 predicts that the African population will reach 1.7 billion by 2030, an increase of 400 million from the 1.3 billion of 2018. This population will require 17.1 million tonnes of fish just to maintain the current, globally low, per capita fish consumption level, which is an increase of 3.2 mt from the 2017 level.
Fish supply for human use comes from fisheries, aquaculture and imports minus exports and non-food uses. If African countries are to avoid any interruption of fisheries’ contributions and support to other sectors of the national economies, export and non-food use may need to maintain the status quo (Fig.2). Thus, an increase in supply could only come from increased production and rationalized redistribution of fish products available.
Fig.2 Historical trends of fish supply (blue=fisheries production, purple=aquaculture, and yellow=import, brown=non-food use and green=export) in Africa. The dark red line presents the total fish consumed from 1961-2017. The light colors show projections of each element. The gap indicates the additional quantity of fish needed to meet the current consumption level of 9.9 kg per capita by 2030 under the projections of various elements.
Fishery resources in African waters are currently under more tremendous fishing pressure than the world average (Fig.1e), and there are very few fish stocks that are currently under-utilized and for which production could be increased by fishing harder. Rebuilding the more than 40% of stocks that are overfished to levels capable of producing maximum sustainable yield should lead to increases in sustainable production but require strict regulations and effective compliance and enforcement and would also take some time to produce the desired effects. This should not deter the countries from serious efforts to rebuild stocks, under SDG 14.4, but FAO’s latest estimates are that Africa’s fishery production will remain little-changed by 203010 (Fig.2).
Likely providing more significant opportunity for the increase is African aquaculture, which was at a meagre scale with a total of about 10 thousand tonnes in 1995, but has since developed rapidly, increasing linearly to 2.1 million tonnes, 200 times growth, by 2017 (Fig.1b). If this linear trend continues into the future, aquaculture production could increase by an additional 1.1 million tonnes by 203010 (Fig.2). This would still leave a shortage of 2.1 mt to meet the market demand (Fig.2).
Various sources of fish supply amounted to a total of 21.1 million tonnes of fish in 2017, mainly from fishery production, import and IUU fishing (Fig.3). However, the total amount of fish humans consumed was only 14.0 mt, primarily from reported fishery production by local African fleets, import, aquaculture and IUU fishing, which is not accounted in official statistical data. The total IUU catch in Africa was estimated at 3.5 mt in 2017 (Fig.3), of which 48% were landed by foreign vessels outside Africa and considered outsourced as they do not make any contribution to Africa’s food supply and 52% were caught by African vessels, which, although not counted in the official per capita consumption, were still channelled to local supply and consumption and were therefore kept in Fig.3.
Fig.3 Flowchart of fish products in Africa from source to end-use in 2017. Aquaculture=total aquaculture production in African countries in a million tonnes (mt); Fishery-FVF=fishery production that is reported and taken out of Africa by foreign vessels fishing (FVF) legally in African waters; Fishery-L=fishery production from local African fleets in both marine and freshwaters; Import=amount of fish African countries imported through international trade; IUU=illegal and unreported catches including both non-African and African vessels; Consumption=amount of fish consumed by African people; Export=amount of fish African countries exported; Non-food use=quantity of fish used for non-human consumption; and Outsourced= amount of fish that are outsourced to non-African countries through legal (FVF) or IUU fishing.
In the face of severe malnutrition, hunger and poverty in Africa, the question for policymakers and managers is how to divert or produce more fish to human consumption within ecological bounds. The African fish flowchart (Fig.3) shows a clear hotspot of the outsourced fish. The 3.3 million tonnes of fish were caught by FVF and IUU fishing of non-African vessels and landed outside Africa. Internalizing the outsourced catch for African consumption can make up the supply shortage of 2.1 mt by 2030 as discussed before but, if the goal is only to retain fish consumption at current per capita rates, the remaining1.2 mt can also be used to replace part of the fish import. In addition to improving food supply, it will also bring social and economic benefits to local communities along the value chain.
The imperative and benefits to achieve fishery sustainability
The gap between supply and demand may result in two severe consequences if not filled. These are constraining consumption – further troubling the continent plagued by hunger and driving price rises, which will hit the poor consumers hardest as well as making fishing more profitable, consequently motivating more investment in additional uncontrolled inputs and fishing effort, including IUU fishing (Fig.S5). The increased fishing would in turn, deplete fish resources even further and cause more severe overfishing and lost productivity (Fig.S5). As a result, African fisheries could move further away from the SDG target of zero overfishing, with knock-on effects across the other SDGs, increasing the prospects that Africa as a whole might become the continent left furthest behind in the SDG initiative.
Overfishing has various adverse impacts on biodiversity and the integrity and functioning of ecosystems. However, its most imminent consequence is the vicious circle -- overfishing reduces fish stocks and then leads to declines in production and economic benefits, which push fishing fleets to fish even harder to keep afloat, reinforcing overfishing. This cycle eventually leads to the collapse of fish stocks and the fishery they support if no management interventions are introduced. However, different from country to country, overall sustainable development of the fisheries sector across Africa is seriously hindered by weak systems for monitoring, control and surveillance, insufficient management capacity, excess fishing capacity, particularly in artisanal fisheries11. We, therefore, argue that African countries should review and strengthen fishery legislation where required and develop an effective management system that can break the vicious circle and achieve sustainable fisheries.
Central to this must be the control of fishing pressure to reduce overfishing and restore over-fished stocks to production levels that can provide more fish to African people, better profits and social prospects for the fishery sector, and sustainable fish resources as required by the SDGs1. Fishing pressure consists of three components: local legal fleets, FVF and IUU fishing. Sustainable management of all fish stocks in the EEZ is a primary substantive obligation of all coastal states by the Law of the Sea21, and eradicating IUU fishing is further mandated by the Port State Measures Agreement22 and other international instruments. Agreements for FVF should be reviewed with the participation of all legitimate stakeholders to reduce the risks of abuse, and with the 2063 goal23 of African fisheries for the benefit of African people firmly in mind.
Addressing FVF and IUU fishing can bring substantial social, economic and environmental benefits. A vital intention of the agreements under which FVFs operate is to increase the benefits that host countries can obtain from their fisheries resources24. Although this intention seems materialized on the surface to some extent, FVFs frequently have a range of negative consequences, including unequal distribution of benefits between partners, negative impacts on domestic fisheries, and illegal and over-fishing by the foreign fleets25,26. The role of FVFs is an issue that should be reviewed seriously by African nations in the context of national social, economic and environmental consequences. It has been estimated that the FVF catches, if caught by African States, could generate a value of $3.3 billion, which is eight times higher than the $0.4 billion African countries were earning from fisheries agreements when these calculations were made9.
IUU fishing poses serious threats to the sustainable exploitation of fish stocks and causes enormous social and economic losses. Stopping the IUU fishing in Africa could recover a gross revenue loss of $10 billion 27 and consequently the IUU fishing’s catch by foreign vessels (1.7 mt, Fig.3) could be converted to legal local supply to African fish markets, which could eliminate the need for imports that cost $2.5 billion of hard currency, calculated at the import price in 2017 (Fig S4). Further, addressing FVF and IUU fishing will create more employment opportunities and up- and downstream services. The whole supply chain from fish resources to production and consumption can produce significant social, economic and environmental benefits, although difficult to quantify, if managed holistically through national, regional and continent-wide macro-planning.
A regional issue deserving global response
Transforming African fisheries to achieve the SDG 14 targets and for the sector to contribute effectively to many other Goals is a great challenge. Under the UN 2030 Agenda1, the primary responsibility for ensuring this transformation resides with the individual countries, and they need to do all they can to fulfil their commitments to the UN Agenda, the AU Agenda 206323 and other related agreements and commitments. Although necessary on their own, those efforts are insufficient for achieving the SDGs. Most African countries lack adequate infrastructure, effective governance systems, sufficient implementation capacity and the financial and human resources needed to make the necessary progress along a broad front on their own. As called for in the UN 2030 Agenda1, developed countries and the broader international community need to unlock ambitious support to African countries to address the multiple dimensions of the SDGs and pledges, drawing on mutually reinforcing “levers” to examine, empower and enact change.