WWF report notes that over 3 million tonnes of freshwater fish are caught each year in Africa, representing almost 30% of the reported global freshwater fish catch.
A new report by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) christened ‘Africa’s forgotten fishes’ offers an optimistic view of Africa’s freshwater fish populations, describing their future as ‘bright’ even as it highlighted a worrying trend of one in every four freshwater fish species across the continent being at risk of extinction.
The report released ahead of the Ramsar Conference on Wetlands being held in Zimbabwe (23-31 July) notes that over 3 million tonnes of freshwater fish are caught each year in Africa, representing almost 30% of the reported global freshwater fish catch.
“The continent boasts 12 of the top 25 inland fish producing countries in the world, with Uganda coming in highest in sixth place. The annual catch feeds the highest per capita consumption of freshwater fish of any continent in the world and employs over 3 million people as well as playing a central role in the cultures of many indigenous peoples,” the report reads in part.
Tiny galaxiids of South Africa, Nile perch (lates niloticus), cichlids, African elephantfishes, African tigerfish and cuckoo catfish are cited in the report as some of the famous fresh water fish on the continent facing extinction, coupled by increasing pressures from overfishing, habitat degradation, pollution and effects of climate change.
However, the challenge is not only an African phenomenon. Globally, the report says, freshwater species populations “are in freefall – crashing 85% since 1970.”
“Nearly a quarter of the world’s freshwater fish species are threatened with extinction. And Africa’s freshwater fishes are no exception.”
Overall, an estimated 26 per cent of Africa’s freshwater fishes are threatened, including species assessed as critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable, with nine freshwater fishes in Africa being categorized as extinct, including three in Morocco, two in Madagascar and one each from Kenya and Tanzania, Rwanda, Tunisia and Lake Malawi.
On a positive note, the report says all is not lost, proposing local solutions as the remedy against extinction of freshwater fish in Africa.
“It is not too late. Local solutions have demonstrated encouraging results,” the report says, highlighting co-management of fisheries with local communities in Liuwa Plain National Park in Zambia and some conservancies in Namibia.
And in Tanzania, where the dagaa fishery (Rastrineobola argentea) in Lake Tanganyika is critically important to communities living on the lakeshore, local communities have set up 21 Beach Management Units to protect fish breeding and nursery zones, and prevent the use of illegal fishing gear, such as monofilament nets, beach seine nets or under-sized mesh nets.
Similarly in Angola, community leaders and fishers are working with various organizations to establish community fisheries monitoring systems and community fishery management cooperatives.
Ademola Ajagbe, Regional Managing Director, The Nature Conservancy Africa in a May 2023 article published on LinkedIn said local communities must be an integral part of stewards and holders of knowledge and rights, leaning on their traditional approaches while protecting their fisheries for the safeguard of their social, cultural and economic interests.
“To sustain our rivers and lakes for the incalculable benefits to people and planet, we must all coordinate and collaborate our conservation actions, including those for cross-border rivers and lakes,” he noted.
The threats facing Africa’s critical freshwater fisheries, the WWF report noted, require a broader range of solutions, which call for full scale and speedy implementation.
They include letting the rivers flow naturally, improving water quality in freshwater ecosystems, protecting and restoring critical habitats and species, ending unsustainable management of resources, preventing and controlling invasions by non-native species and protecting free-flowing rivers.
WWF urged African governments to set national biodiversity targets for 2030, so as to safeguard their freshwater ecosystems and the future of freshwater fishes.