With the aim of contributing to an increase of socio-economic and environmental development level, CESO is providing Technical Assistance for the implementation of a Regional Fisheries Strategy which encourages for a deepening of regional integration in the East and South of the African continent - Indian Ocean.

This intervention is intended to support the implementation of strategic priorities for the fisheries sector in the region by ensuring the sustainable management of maritime resources.

The Regional Fisheries and Aquaculture Strategy of the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) constitutes, in this area, a political instrument in this area to provide guidance and prioritization for a number of Member States and to ensure better management and conservation of fisheries resources.

During the last decade and in order to lay the foundations for a comprehensive regional cooperation program, the European Union has been supporting the IOC in the review of the Regional Fisheries and Aquaculture Strategy. By 2015, continuing to fund the Smartfish program and following the elaboration and subsequent consolidation of a first draft of the Regional Strategy with a projected horizon for the period 2015-2020, the document was formally endorsed by those responsible for fisheries in the five states IOC members: Comoros, Reunion (France), Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles.

In this context, CESO provides Technical Assistance to the Management Unit of Smartfish II (based in Mauritius) to implement the directives to the mentioned operational program intended to reach the following results:

• Achieve replenishment of stocks of certain species of fish and contribute to the operationalization of management protocols for cross-border fishing activity in the regions concerned;
• Ensure fisheries governance at national and regional levels in selected beneficiary countries;
• Deepening support for selective fisheries governance, for which self-sustaining and cost-effective Monitoring, Control and Security projects have been designed and implemented through an approach based on participatory public-private management and / or community-based management;
• Ensure the improvement of export value chains of fish species;
• In order to add value and contribute to market development, provide for the minimization of post-catch losses in artisanal and commercial fisheries through better storage and better handling.

The SmartFish program is one of the largest regional fisheries programs in Africa. Covering a vast area of the Indian Ocean, it comprises about 20 beneficiary countries: Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Funded by the European Union, the program is implemented by the Indian Ocean Commission in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

The Technical Assistance will be implemented by CESO Development Consultants within a consortium led by COWI. Starting in December 2016, the project will run until April 2018.

February 2017.