African fisheries are facing a significant decline due to overfishing, pollution, and weak enforcement of existing laws, experts warned at the 8th General Assembly of the African Platform for Regional Institutions in Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Systems (APRIFAAS) in Entebbe, Uganda.
Mr Yoseph Shiferaw Mamo, Senior Fisheries and Livestock Officer at COMESA and Chairperson APRIFAAS, emphasised that Africa’s fisheries largely depend on traditional fishing systems that ignore breeding seasons and conservation principles.
“Because we are not controlling fishing activities, the resource is going down. Fish breed seasonally, but our fishers continue to harvest even during the breeding season, catching immature fish, affecting the next generation of stock,” he said.
The meeting aimed to discuss ways to enhance intra-African trade and aquatic products under the African Continental Free Trade Area.
Experts stressed the need for regional cooperation, harmonised policies, and strengthened enforcement to ensure the stability of the sector.
“Fish migration across borders demands coordinated management as fish knows no borders,” Mr Mamo said, highlighting the impact of pollution and unregulated foreign fishing on Africa’s water bodies.
According to the World Wide Fund 2025 report, 26 per cent of Africa’s assessed freshwater fish species are threatened with extinction, with the true number potentially being much higher due to significant data gaps.
Mr Joseph Bwanika, Commissioner of Aquaculture and Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries, Uganda, emphasized that sustainable production is the foundation of trade.
“Without responding to fishing, Africa’s fisheries-based economies could collapse,” he said, noting that Uganda alone loses nearly 40 per cent of its fish through illegal, unreported, and unregulated trade (IUU).
The Ugandan government is implementing a robust legal framework to regulate fishing activities and address IUU fishing, targeting to raise annual output from 720,000 metric tonnes to 1.7 million tonnes, including one million tonnes from aquaculture.
Ms Hellen Guebama, Senior Fisheries Officer at Africa Union Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), stressed the need for harmonized policies across borders.
“We face challenges of uncoordinated policies and unregulated fishing in shared waterbodies, but through various initiatives, we are supporting countries to domesticate continental policy frameworks and strengthen regional collaboration.”