Proposed Solutions to the Problems of the Lake Chad Fisheries: Resilience Lessons for Africa?

Abstract

Fishing communities in Lake Chad are experiencing humanitarian crises—more than five million people in the region are hungry and malnourished—and fishers are in dire need of improved fisheries management policies. Understanding the fishers’ resilience, and how they perceive their fisheries policies, could provide an opportunity for governments and fisheries managers to refine their policies. The present study, which is based on 38 semi-structured interviews carried out between January and April 2022 on the Nigerian shores of Lake Chad, breaks new ground, firstly by seeking to understand the issues raised by declining fish stocks in Lake Chad from the viewpoints of fishers themselves; and secondly by making use of resilience theory to interpret the fishers’ responses to their situation. Our findings are that the fishers have a surer grasp of the most effective resilience strategies available to them than external bodies; and that the fishers’ adaptive resilience and local knowledge provide a framework for developing smarter fisheries management policies for Lake Chad. This study provides evidence to support recommendations for Africa’s supranational, national and local governments to invest in, and make use of, the fisheries research on the ground to address the problems facing its fisheries, rather than experimenting with seemingly random ideas from across the globe. The Lake Chad fisheries crisis is an extreme case demonstrating the harmful effects of external influences from which the fisheries of other African countries can learn lessons.