West Africa’s largest fish importer is making a serious attempt to reverse its dependence on foreign supply, launching a five-year programme backed by $33 million to rebuild domestic fisheries and aquaculture capacity from the ground up.
Côte d’Ivoire’s Project for the Development of Competitive Value Chains in Aquaculture and Sustainable Fisheries – ProDeCAP was officially introduced on 26 March with support from the Food and Agriculture Organisation. The programme is financed 85% through an African Development Bank loan, with the remainder provided by the government and partners and is designed to reach approximately 700,000 beneficiaries across aquaculture and capture fisheries.
The numbers driving the initiative are sobering. Domestic production currently meets less than 15% of national demand, a gap that has made Côte d’Ivoire the largest fish importer in West Africa. Production has fallen from 113,637 tonnes in 2018 to 87,228 tonnes in 2023, a decline of more than 23% over five years. Over the same period, import volumes nearly doubled from 388,000 tonnes in 2015 to more than 732,000 tonnes in 2024, whilst the cost of those imports rose from US$411.7 million to over US$930 million, a fiscal burden that the programme is directly aimed at reducing.
The constraints are structural such as post-harvest losses, weak infrastructure, climate-related impacts on fish stocks, illegal fishing and limited access to financing for operators have collectively undermined the sector’s competitiveness. ProDeCAP will address these through improvements in sector governance, resource management, aquaculture expansion and value chain efficiency, with implementation spanning coastal zones including Abidjan and San Pedro as well as inland agricultural lowlands around Bouaké and Yamoussoukro.
The aquaculture target is ambitious but necessary. Output is projected to grow from 8,806 tonnes recorded in 2023 to 35,000 tonnes by 2031 with a fourfold increase that will require sustained investment, technical support and the kind of policy consistency that has been absent from the sector for too long.
