Corruption and commercial fisheries in Africa

This U4 briefing paper provides a short overview of corruption and the exploitation of marine resources in Africa. This paper argues that the most effective and realistic way of countering corruption appears to be through strengthening transparency and accountability, and that African civil society has an important role to play in scrutinising fisheries access agreements, tracking court cases and monitoring government budgets.<br /><br />Policy reforms that may reduce incentives and opportunities for corruption in fisheries&rsquo; management are also discussed.&nbsp; These include:<br /> placing corruption on the international agenda is a necessary first step in reforming the governance of fisheries and reducing the opportunities for corrupt activities fisheries departments should be encouraged to publish details of license agreements, including information on payments, taxes and fines at a national level, multi&ndash;stakeholder committees could be employed to oversee licensing decisions, instead of this role being undertaken by a single official or department only. At an international level, African states could benefit from negotiating access agreements with foreign fishing nations collectively, rather than alone African civil society organisations should be scrutinising access agreements, tracking court cases and monitoring government budgets. However, few countries have strong civil society organisations that work on fisheries, and those organisations that do exist tend to lack capacity and training experience from other resource sectors suggests the need for independent audits of government departments because tracking revenue flows and government expenditures can be complex and civil society organisations tend to lack the necessary expertise or credibility reforms relating to greater transparency, accountability and public oversight could be joined together<br />through an equivalent of the&nbsp;Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).