As East Africa’s oceans change, coastal women build new livelihoods

MALINDI, Kenya (AP) — The unfinished restaurant is still little more than concrete walls and wooden beams. As her daughter sweeps away the last piles of sand, 54-year-old Nuru Mohammed directs women hanging fishing nets to serve as decor. In a few days, the beachside restaurant on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast will open, offering another way to earn a living.

“For us women, this is hope,” says Mohammed, who, for most of her life, was one of the few fisherwomen in Malindi, a town northeast of the port city of Mombasa. “It will help support many families that have depended on the ocean for decades.”

Across East Africa’s coast, fisherfolk are increasingly turning to tourism, ecosystem restoration and other conservation-based businesses, reinventing their relationship with the sea as climate change, overfishing and declining ocean health threaten their livelihoods.

In Kenya, women are turning restored mangrove forests into sources of income through beekeeping and ecotourism. In Tanzania’s Zanzibar archipelago, fishing communities are protecting coral reefs through locally managed closures. In Mozambique, sea grass restoration is creating jobs while reviving marine habitats. Together, these efforts are redefining resilience, not as leaving the ocean behind, but as restoring it while building enduring livelihoods.

“Communities that depend on the ocean are also its best stewards,” said Andreane Martel, project director for a conservation program dubbed ReSea. “When local people, especially women, lead conservation, they protect biodiversity while creating more resilient and inclusive livelihoods.”

Local women are adapting

Mohammed said she has lost boats to theft and now struggles to compete with industrial trawlers. A nearby Chinese-owned fish processing facility reflects the dramatic changes for the industry.

“I can’t compete with that kind of power or scale,” she says.

“It has been tough,” Mohammed says, looking toward the ocean. “I fought to remain a fisherwoman. But I think it’s a fight I can no longer win.”

Ten kilometers (6 miles) away, where the Sabaki River meets the Indian Ocean, Beatrice Mwanyiro oversees a mangrove nursery and restaurant built by Samahco, a 30-member women’s self-help group supported by the Canadian government through ReSea.

“We have to adapt to the changing times,” Mwanyiro says. “The number of fish coming into the shallow waters are falling every year. Without another source of income, we won’t be able to feed our families.”

Mangroves, coral reefs, sea grass meadows and nearshore fisheries provide food, protect coastlines from storms and store vast amounts of carbon. But those ecosystems are imperiled by warming oceans, pollution, habitat loss and overfishing.

Mohamed Somo, a leader of fishermen in Lamu, a UNESCO heritage site, says boats that used to come in with catches of up to 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of fish now often bring home less than 30 kilograms (66 pounds).

Kenyan law restricts trawlers to waters at least 5 nautical miles (9 kilometers) offshore, but fishers say some vessels routinely operate much closer. The challenge extends beyond Kenya. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing costs the global economy an estimated $23 billion annually while threatening marine biodiversity and the food security of billions who depend on fish as a primary source of protein, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

“The trawlers fish offshore during the day, but at night they move into the shallow waters where artisanal fishers work,” Somo says. “By morning, there’s very little left for us.”

Race to protect oceans

The growing pressure on coastal communities has pushed ocean conservation higher on the political agenda as communities struggle for survival and try to protect their ocean economies.

“Coastal communities are on the front lines of climate change and declining ocean health, but they are also among the strongest drivers of resilience,” said Jerry Mang’ena, co-founder and executive director of Action for Ocean, a Tanzania-based organization that restores mangroves along its coastline.

“Supporting sustainable livelihoods, from aquaculture and ecotourism to ecosystem restoration, helps families adapt while reducing pressure on the ocean. If we’re serious about protecting our seas, we must invest in the people who have cared for them for generations.”

At the recent Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, conservation groups urged African governments to ratify the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement, or “High Seas” treaty, a landmark U.N. pact establishing marine protected areas in international waters and fair sharing of marine resources. It entered into force in January, and as of April had been signed by 145 countries and ratified by 81.

The outcome of negotiations over additional ratifications of the treaty could have a profound impact on the lives of fisher people like Mohammed as they try to build futures that no longer depend entirely on increasingly uncertain catches.

“The BBNJ Agreement gives African governments a historic opportunity to protect the high seas and safeguard the future of our fisheries,” said Aliou Ba, oceans campaign lead at Greenpeace Africa.

“But protecting the ocean also means confronting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing that is stripping African waters of marine life and robbing coastal communities of food and income,” he said. “Governments cannot afford to delay.”

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This story has been corrected to show that the mangrove nursery and restaurant was built by a women’s group.

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