By Sebastian Mathew, Independent Adviser, Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies (AFS) entered into force on 15 September 2025. As of the 14th WTO Ministerial Conference held in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in March 2026, 26 African members of the WTO had accepted the Agreement, including eight landlocked countries. Given the importance of marine capture fisheries for Africa’s food security and economy, implementing the AFS can significantly support sustainable development outcomes across the continent.

The coastal members of the WTO include top African marine capture, fish-producing nations like Mauritania, South Africa, Senegal, and Nigeria. For some African small island developing States (SIDS), such as Seychelles and Cabo Verde, exports of animal products from capture fisheries for direct human consumption contributed to over 30% of their total value of merchandise trade in 2022. With a seaboard of over 42,000 kilometers, the African continent has a population of 1.5 billion people, of which over one billion are in the coastal states. Two hundred million people are estimated to regularly consume fish on the continent, and reliance on fish as a source of protein is particularly high in countries like Ghana, the Gambia, Senegal, and Sierra Leone.

In 2022, African fish production reached over 11 million tonnes: six million from marine capture fisheries, three million from inland capture, and the remainder from aquaculture. While marine capture production was divided almost evenly between small-scale and large-scale fisheries, the former played a much larger role in employment, supporting approximately 1.4 million fishers, either on foot or mostly on vessels up to 12 meters in length, compared with around 200,000 fishers working on large-scale vessels. Nearly all inland capture production also came from the small-scale subsector. In addition, more than one million people in Africa engaged in marine fishing solely for subsistence.

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However, the fisheries sector encounters growing challenges in Africa. A significant share of the large-scale marine capture of small pelagic species, such as sardinella and horse mackerel, is increasingly processed into fishmeal and exported as animal feed from countries like Mauritania, Senegal, and the Gambia. A similar trend is observed among “semi-industrial” and “advanced artisanal” or “offshore artisanal” fleets – vessels that can be up to 30 meters long. Moreover, these species face overfishing pressure from industrial and artisanal fishing due to fishmeal and fish oil production. The diversion of raw fish to fishmeal reduces the availability of fish for direct human consumption. The same fish resources could help meet demand in net fish importing coastal WTO members like Angola, Ghana, Guinea, Mozambique, and Sierra Leone. They could also improve regional access to fish for landlocked African WTO members, such as Burkina Faso, Mali, and Zambia that currently import nearly a half a million tonnes of fish annually.

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing presents another significant challenge. It is estimated to account for around 3.5 million tonnes of fish production in Africa, often involving distant-water fishing vessels and destructive methods such as bottom trawling. Implementing the AFS could help curb harmful subsidies to these vessels in African waters – a well-established trigger for fleet migration – and thereby reduce IUU fishing. It could also improve access for small-scale and artisanal fishing vessels to traditional fishing grounds and resources, consistent with SDG target 14.b. In turn, this would support employment, strengthen regional markets, and enhance food security and nutrition, particularly in low-income, food-deficit African countries.

The number of overfished stocks is as high as 52.6% of the analyzed stocks in waters from Morocco to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The AFS could help eliminate subsidies to overfished stocks and transform them to sustainable levels. Implementing the AFS in Africa could also strengthen existing protocols, such as those of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), by contributing to the elimination of IUU fishing and to effective fisheries management. These frameworks support improved access for migrant small-scale fishers to transboundary fishery resources and encourage participatory management approaches, consistent with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN’s (FAO) Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines).

The requirement under the AFS to notify the type of fishing activity benefiting from subsidies – such as commercial, semi-industrial, or small-scale and artisanal fisheries; coastal, nearshore, offshore, or distant water operations; and gear types including trawl, troll, purse seine, gillnet, or long-line – can improve transparency and complement arrangements like the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI) in Africa. The FiTI standard has been implemented by countries including Mauritania and Seychelles and is being applied in several other African coastal states.

If effectively implemented alongside strong fisheries conservation and management measures, including participatory approaches, the AFS can help shift governance toward greater accountability and transparency. This, in turn, could support decent work and contribute to the development of food value chains across Africa. The establishment of the WTO Fish Fund, in collaboration with FAO, provides an opportunity for WTO members that have accepted the AFS, particularly least developed countries (LDCs) like Mauritania, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, to advance their capacity for implementation.

Addressing IUU fishing, curtailing destructive fishing and fishmeal production, promoting small-scale and artisanal fishing, and improving regional trade in fish for direct human consumption can significantly expand employment opportunities in sustainable fisheries. This would benefit people from a diversity of lived experiences, including Indigenous Peoples, and help advance the conservation and sustainable use of marine and coastal biodiversity. It would also support sustainable livelihoods, food security, and nutrition outcomes across Africa, consistent with international, regional, and national obligations.