MAMADOU ALIOU DIALLO, JOURNALIST
This article was written in collaboration with Aliou Diallo, a Guinean journalist and photojournalist who is currently the communications officer for the African Confederation of Artisanal Fishing Organisations (CAOPA), based in Mbour (Senegal).
It's 3pm on a weekend in March when we arrive at the artisanal fish landing site of San Pedro, which is located within the grounds of the industrial harbour. San Pedro is Côte d'Ivoire's main export hub for cocoa, rubber and cashew nuts.
Separated from the artisanal fishing wharf by a two-metre-high wall, the premises comprise two hangars and a car park. Under the first hangar, on the right, rusting old fridges, "carcasses", the women fish processors call them, converted into makeshift iceboxes. These wrecked structures contrast with the long 40-foot container, tucked away in the shade of a corner, acquired just over two years ago by the San Pedro cooperative of women processors and fishmongers with funding from the sectoral support of the EU-Côte d'Ivoire Fisheries Agreement.
We wait a few minutes to meet Bakayoko Nouhou, General Secretary of the Société Coopérative de Femmes Mareyeuses Grossistes et Détaillantes du port de pêche de San Pedro (SCFMGD-SP), who is at the prayers. At this hour, there is little movement around the container. Only one woman has come to pick up a few skipjack tuna and three large yellowfin tuna, an essential ingredient in garba, the Ivorian national dish made with fried tuna and attiéké (fermented cassava semolina). She also waits patiently for Nouhou, who arrives with a notebook under his arm and gives permission to open the container to the employee who records the entries and releases.
FINANCING, THE NEVER-ENDING CHALLENGE FOR WOMEN PROCESSORS
For each use of the container, the members of the cooperative pay 50 CFA francs per kilo, which reverts to the cooperative. Today, Nouhou sells his tuna at 1,100 francs a kilo and his three fish weigh almost 93 kilos. No money is being exchanged for the time being. The "mama" will pay when she has sold her stock, perhaps in a week's time. If she doesn't make a profit, she won't come back until she has some money.
A retailer from the Société Coopérative de Femmes Mareyeuses Grossistes et Détaillantes of the fishing port of San Pedro arrives at the third opening (3pm-6.30pm) to purchase three yellowfin tuna (93kg) and some skipjack. The tuna costs 1100 CFA francs a kilo. She will only pay when she has sold her products. Photo: Joëlle Philippe/CFFA.
The wholesaler smiles: "You have to help the women and give them credit, otherwise they can't work." Bunia Françoise, a retailer who arrives an hour later, does not have the advantage of wholesalers like Nouhou: "If I sell fish to women, I have to wait for them to sell. But if fish arrives while you're waiting, what do you do, since you have no money to pay for it? Some weeks you work, and other weeks you don't, because your money hasn't come in".
Between the two sheds, in the sunny car park, on the other hand, there's real business going on. It's for the "big customers" from Abidjan. As soon as noble species such as red carp or grouper are landed, they are placed in cardboard or plastic boxes lined with plastic sheeting and sprinkled with ice. They will make the long journey to Abidjan (around nine hours) and will be distributed locally to major restaurants or processed for supermarket chains.
These noble species go in a flash, and women cannot afford them. In fact, container traffic is at a standstill, because March is not the season for artisanal fishing. "In San Pedro, fishing never stops, except when the weather is bad," explains Bakayoko Nouhou. But even though a few large angling pirogues go all the way to Liberia to fish all year round, the members of the SCFMGD-SP cooperative do not have the capacity to finance these trips: "Here, each fisherman has his own funder. When the fisherman goes fishing, it's his customer who pays the bills, who buys the sardines [Ed. bait], the lines, the fuel, so that he can go fishing."
As soon as the noble species, such as grouper or red carp, are landed, they are piled into large bins filled with ice to be driven 9 hours between San Pedro and Abidjan. These are then distributed to restaurants and supermarkets by larger companies. Photo: JP.
Preserving the product, a battle won
"Thanks to this container, our members are able to get by a little", explains the cooperative's secretary. The advantage is that it is very close to the artisanal fishing landing quay: "When the fish arrives, we distribute it to our members and we put the rest in the container for the next day. If we see that the market is saturated, we keep our products so that they don't get spoilt," explains Bakayoko. The members of the cooperative are mainly fishmongers and processors who supply the local market, and they smoke their products at home in the absence of a suitable processing site.
Bakayoko Nouhou continues to thank the EU for granting them the container, although he admits that they cannot fill it on their own. "It can hold up to 40 tonnes of fish. We can't have 40 tonnes of fish in the port of San Pedro, because it's small-scale fishing." This is why SCFMGD-SP also rents out space to other customers. But Mrs Bunia believes that they fail to take advantage of the space and that the lack of shelves in the container prevents the freshness from "being released as it should be. We have to put [the fish] on the ground and stack the boxes."
The container has no shelves, which complicates the storage of large quantities of fish, especially during the artisanal fishing season. Photo: Joëlle Philippe/CAPE.
Using electricity is a challenge, not only because of the costs (up to 85,000 CFA per month, i.e. €130), especially during the season when large quantities of fish are landed, but also because of power cuts and blackouts. When this happens, they inform the members and only open the container if strictly necessary, "but if we see that it's going to take a long time, we borrow the generator from the port, so that our products don't spoil".
SCFMGD-SP is a member of the Union des Sociétés Coopératives des Femmes de la Pêche et assimilées de Côte d'Ivoire (USCOFEP-CI), which is looking at other ways of preserving fish. For example, in Grand-Béréby, an hour's drive from the Liberian border, the women of the DECOTHY cooperative and USCOFEP-CI have joined forces with a local NGO, Conservation Espèces Marines (CEM), to set up a solar-powered complex with a 20-foot refrigerated container, a size more suited to local production.
Banner photo: A young loader from the artisanal fishing port of San Pedro wheelbarrows three yellowfin tuna out of the refrigerated container, by Joëlle Philippe.