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Women Shellfishers and Food Security Project - Phase I | UCC Subgrant

Project Description

The Women Shellfishers and Food Security Project is a co-creation of the University of Rhode Island and partners from West Africa – the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, the University of Ghana, TRY Oyster Women’s Association in The Gambia, and World Agroforestry with the United Staes Agency for International Development. This project seeks to address the need for greater attention to food security for women shellfishers and their families while improving biodiversity conservation of the ecosystems on which their livelihoods depend. More robust models, tools, approaches, and processes are needed to enable and promote these sustainable food systems and natural resource management in coastal West Africa. The project will strengthen the evidence base, increase awareness, and equip stakeholders to adapt and apply successful approaches in areas of high potential for replication and scale-up in the eleven coastal West African countries from Senegal to Nigeria. It will draw on successful cases of a rights-based, ecosystem-based, participatory co-management approach to shellfish management by women in mangrove ecosystems in The Gambia and Ghana developed with USAID assistance. Knowledge and experience generated through the project will open up opportunities for improvement and broader application of these promising approaches in West Africa through these key project components:

  1. Conduct the first-ever participatory regional assessment of the situation, unmet needs, and promising approaches to shellfish co-management led by women across the eleven countries and the scope and scale of the potential sectoral and cross-sectoral benefits.
  2. Elaborate and test elements of models based on existing approaches through site-based research in The Gambia and Ghana to strengthen the evidence base for successful elements of the model. The project will conduct six technical studies covering the field research to document linkages in a Theory of Change and conceptual results chain between women’s shellfish co-management and livelihoods, mangrove conservation, and nutrition. It will examine existing elements in the approach that are not well documented, and that could enhance the approach if they are better understood. It will document both sectoral and cross-sectoral findings.
  3. Foster a community of practice around the development and dissemination of a toolkit on a rights-based, ecosystem-based, participatory co-management of shellfish by women in mangrove ecosystems in West Africa with and for community, national, and regional level stakeholders. The toolkit will integrate findings from the participatory regional assessment and site-based research. Building on these activities, the toolkit development and dissemination will build a community of practice and provide capacity development support of 37 stakeholder institutions in West Africa. It will provide the first practical guide for the design and implementation of women’s shellfish co-management in West Africa, supported by a network of practice, among other elements such as policy briefs and case studies.

Funding Information

Funding Institution(s)
  • USAID
    Amount : USD304,000.00
    Duration: October 2020 - September 2022

Project Impact

Oyster shellfishers receive training oyster ecology for improved co-management
Twenty (20) women of the TRY Oyster Women’s Association receive training on oyster ecology for improved co-management in The Gambia.
The training is one of the key activities outlined in the schedule of the Women Shellfishers and Food Security Project intended to deepen the understanding of the resource users on the basic biological and environmental principles of oyster ecology in order to enhance their co-management efforts.

The training was organized with two main aims:
1) to build the capacity of women shellfishers on oyster ecology for better implementation of the community-based management of oyster stocks in mangrove and estuarine systems in The Gambia, and
2) to encourage the youth to get involved in the oyster business as a source of economic empowerment and as a tool for natural resource conservation.
West Africa women shellfisheries regional workshop group photo
The first-ever regional stakeholder workshops centered on women-led shellfisheries have been held virtually in West Africa. Women-led shellfisheries are gaining the spotlight, and over the last two years, the USAID Women Shellfishers and Food Security Project has made significant strides in elevating its level of awareness among 11 coastal West African countries.

From Senegal to Nigeria, key stakeholders are getting informed about this essential small-scale fishery that has long been neglected, albeit it plays an important role in the livelihood and nutrition of women and their households on the rural coast where poverty is rife.

The two-phase workshop, held in March and July 2022 respectively, aimed to engage key stakeholders, primarily the women harvesters, government, academia, NGOs, regional bodies, and other related projects in the development of a toolkit for the up-scaling of estuarine and mangrove ecosystem-based shellfisheries in West Africa.

The outcomes of the project, including a regional shellfisheries assessment report and multivariate analysis of the theory of change model for the project, were disseminated.