Artisanal fisheries are crucial for the livelihoods of coastal communities in East African coastal communities, contributing to poverty reduction and economic development in several households in the region. However, they are at risk due to increased over-exploitation and the use of destructive fishing methods, which have led to a general decline of marine resources and biodiversity loss.

Attempts to regulate fisheries in the region through the implementation of marine protected areas and gear restrictions have been constrained by the lack of scientific data, inadequate infrastructure and human capacity to monitor and assess their marine resources adequately. In instances, where data exist, they often remain underutilised due to inappropriate sampling scales and methods or delayed transmission due to a lack of an efficient digital data transmission system, which ultimately hinders their use in the formulation of relevant policies for the sector. Therefore, to achieve the long-term goal of sustainable fisheries and marine conservation in the region, the focus should be directed towards restructuring the planning, collection, archiving and analysis of data to track the status of exploited resources and promote the appropriate utilization and dissemination of information for decision making.

Fishing Data East Africa (FIDEA) is a partnership project, which has been co-designed with the National Fisheries Research Institutes in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zanzibar to address the challenges highlighted, and to strengthen a science-based decision-making process in support of sustainable fisheries management at the national and regional level. This will be supported by training, which will target data collectors, researchers and decision-makers from the three countries. This will lead to an increase in the institutional capacities in meeting national needs for essential fishery data collection,  monitoring the health of the fisheries resources and to contribute to the regional commitments to report on the proportion of fish stocks, which are sustainably fished (SDG 14, target 14.4).