The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) region boasts some of Africa’s most important fisheries resources. These include marine resources in the Western Indian Ocean, Southeast Atlantic, Mediterranean and Red Sea, as well as the vast freshwater systems of the Nile, Congo, Zambezi Basins, and the Great Lakes within them. Cognizant of this resource abundance, one can say, fisheries are one of the most significant resources that COMESA countries have for food and nutrition security, livelihoods, public revenue and socio-economic growth.
Trade in fish and fishery products plays an important role in the economies of COMESA Member States through the creation of employment, food and nutrition supply, and income generation at the different value chain nodes. Intra COMESA fish trade has grown from 41,000 tons in 2019 to 62,000 tons in 2022. Whereas imports of fish and fish products to the COMESA region have reduced from 3.8 million tons in 2029 to 3.4 million tons in 2022. In general, the importation of fish and fish products to the COMESA region is by far larger compared to exports from the region. This mainly attributes to the fact that the large proportion of fish trade within the region remains informal due to the artisanal nature of production scattered in the remote landing sites compounded by the complexity of the players in the sector. On the other hand, safety standards of fish and fish products have witnessed improvement, with medium-to-large manufacturing facilities for processing and packaging playing a significant role, especially in countries experiencing a surge in fish and fish product volumes.
Deliberate efforts and initiatives to facilitate fish and fish products trade among the COMESA Member states including Simplified Trade Regime and the one boarder post among others have contributed to an increase in fish trade and have improved the incomes and livelihoods of the small-scale fish traders and other value chain actors through domestic, intra and inter-regional fish trade activities.