By Adnan Adams Mohammed
The Executive Director of the Fisheries Commission, Benjamin Campion, has thrown his full weight behind a new community-led conservation movement, hailing grassroots facilitation as the essential key to rescuing Ghana’s declining marine resources.
Speaking at the launch of the Small-Scale Fisheries Academy (SSF Academy) in Winneba, Campion emphasized that bridging the gap between formal regulators and coastal communities through participatory dialogue is the most effective way to address the sector’s mounting crises.
The landmark academy, is a one-year partnership between the non-profit Mundus maris asbl and the Canoe and Fishing Gear Owners Association of Ghana (CaFGOAG) LBG designed to empower local stakeholders to co-create sustainable fisheries solutions.
“Fisheries Management is Facilitation”
Reviewing the academy’s collaborative training framework, Campion praised its focus on human resource development over costly physical infrastructure, noting that effective governance relies primarily on communication and conflict resolution.
“My views about the training is that this is very appropriate, very suitable,” Campion remarked. “It doesn’t involve a lot of material; you just need to have the competence to do facilitation. And I see fisheries management to be a form of facilitation.”
Campion pointed out that equipping field officers with professional facilitation skills creates a vital pathway to unlocking solutions across the entire industry.
“The opportunity in this for the Fisheries Commission is that if our officers could be given that opportunity to be facilitated by training them, developing the skill to be professional facilitators,” Campion explained. “It is through that they can then work with the fisher folks that’s the fishmongers, traders, transporters, canoe owners, all the people involved in the value chain they’ll sit down, facilitate the engagement with them so that they develop solutions to the problems facing the sector.”
Acknowledging that only a small cohort of his staff participated in the inaugural workshop, the Executive Director expressed a firm commitment to scale up the program nationwide. “From what I learned, I think I have to find a way by which expanding the scope to cater for other officers,” Campion stated.
Overcoming a Sector in Crisis
Campion’s call for enhanced participatory management comes at a critical turning point for Ghana’s coastal waters. Years of widespread illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices across multiple subsectors have severely degraded marine productivity. Consequently, the Fisheries Commission estimates that Ghana must now import roughly 80,000 tonnes of fish annually to satisfy domestic demand.
Nana Duncan, the Former Chief Fisherman of Elmina Fishing Harbour, echoed Campion’s sentiments on behalf of the academy’s thirty inaugural graduates from Ghana’s four coastal regions.
“Through this training, we have strengthened our capacities as community facilitators, equipping us to support our professional groups and communities in playing a more active role in fisheries co-management,” Duncan stated. “Restoring fish stocks is essential not only for artisanal fisheries but also for the long-term ecological and economic sustainability of Ghana’s semi-industrial and industrial fisheries.”
Translating Law into Landing Beach Realities
The SSF Academy directly builds upon previous milestones, including recent training sessions on the Fisheries and Aquaculture Act, 2025 (Act 1146), which were supported by Blue Ventures Conservation and the Africa Centre of Excellence in Coastal Resilience (ACECoR) for approximately 300 fisher leaders. The 2025 Act provides the formal legal bedrock for co-management, but Kampyon’s strategy relies on communities actively adopting the law.
To turn these legal mandates into practical results, the newly empowered academy graduates have pledged to establish monthly dialogue platforms across Ghana’s landing beaches. These safe, multi-actor spaces will bring together chief fishermen, canoe owners, fish processors, and traders to voluntarily resolve local disputes, ensure compliance with national laws, and feed grassroots insights directly back to the Ministry and Campion’s team at the Fisheries Commission.
