It is another busy Friday afternoon at Makola Market, and Gifty Gyan, a civil servant, is making a quick stop to buy fish before heading home for the weekend.
But Gifty does not ask where the fish was caught, who caught it, or whether the vessel that harvested it from the sea was operating legally.
She has never had a reason to.
Perhaps she should.
“All I want is freshly smoked fish at a moderate price,” Gifty, a mother of five, tells the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at the market.
She represents millions of Ghanaian consumers who rarely think about the journey fish takes before reaching their plates — how it was harvested, handled, or whether it was caught sustainably.
That, however, may soon change.
What you do not know about your fish
Ghana is a fish-eating nation. Fish consumption per capita is among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa, with six out of every 10 households relying on fish as a source of animal protein.
From grilled mackerel and tuna to fried barracuda used in soups and stews, fish is not a luxury for many Ghanaians.
It is a staple.
Papa Yaw Atobrah, a fisheries expert with more than 40 years of experience in the sector, says the journey from the fishing net to the dinner plate involves a system that most consumers know little about.
“Who is allowed to fish in Ghana’s waters, how much they are permitted to catch, whether they are actually following the rules, and whether the fish arriving at markets today will still be there for the next generation,” he told the GNA.
“It is a matter of accountability. Policy makers are holding these resources in trust for the people. Knowing the fish stocks and the number of vessels exploring them is how we know they are doing their job.”
That accountability and transparency gap is what the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI) seeks to address.
A commitment to transparency
Ghana formally committed to FiTI, a global multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at improving transparency and sustainability in marine fisheries, when then-Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development (MoFAD), Hawa Koomson, presented the country’s endorsement to the FiTI Board in Rome in 2024.
The current Minister for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Emelia Arthur, later oversaw the formal signing and establishment of a National Multi-Stakeholder Group (NMSG) to translate the commitment into action.
A transparency assessment conducted in Ghana found that significant amounts of fisheries information existed within government institutions but remained scattered and largely inaccessible to the public.
Dr. Godfred Ameyaw Asiedu, FiTI Regional Coordinator for Anglophone Africa, said the commitment was important because access to information would allow citizens to demand accountability.
FiTI requires governments to publish information on fishing licences, vessels operating in national waters, reported catches, and the effectiveness of measures taken against illegal fishing.
“The idea is simple: if citizens have access to the data and information, they can hold the system accountable,” Dr. Ameyaw told the GNA.
However, inadequate funding remains a major challenge to the effective operation of the NMSG.
A FiTI Lead Ministry and National Focal Point have been appointed to oversee NMSG activities, while its Terms of Reference (ToR) and workplan have been developed.
“We could have done more if we had adequate funding,” Dr. Ameyaw acknowledged.
He said the NMSG had supported the Ministry to develop an online Fisheries Information System, launched in June this year during the Our Oceans Conference in Kenya, to enable the public and people globally to access key information on Ghana’s marine fisheries sector.
For consumers standing at fish counters across the country, however, that transparency is yet to fully arrive.
Why consumers should care
The link between fisheries’ governance and the price and availability of fish on the market is direct, even though it remains invisible to many consumers.
Ghana and other developing countries are losing billions of dollars through Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, which contributes to revenue losses through illicit financial flows, according to a study by the Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC), a global network of organisations working on illicit financial flows.
Mr Ernest Arthur, a fisherman in Takoradi, explained that activities associated with IUU fishing were gradually weakening the country’s fisheries resources.
“When industrial vessels fish in unlicensed zones, it means entering waters where you have no permission to fish. Using small nets means catching young fish before they have grown and reproduced, robbing the ocean of its next generation,” he told the GNA.
“Fishing with light means using bright lights at night to attract and scoop up massive quantities of fish in one go. And falsifying records means writing lies in official logbooks to hide all of the above. Together, these practices strip the ocean faster than it can recover.”
Mr Arthur said fish harvested through such practices eventually ended up at the same markets where legally caught fish were sold.
The result, he said, was higher prices, smaller fish and the gradual disappearance of some species from market displays.
The economics are straightforward, even if the consequences are not immediately visible.
A vessel that ignores protected fishing zones or uses fine-mesh nets to catch juvenile fish has lower operating costs than one that complies with regulations. Those savings move through the supply chain and eventually influence the price of consumers such as Gifty pay at Makola Market.
However, the real cost is only postponed, not avoided.
Every undersized fish sold today represents a fish that did not reproduce and a gap in future catches that no price reduction can replace, says Dr Andrews Agyekumhene, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Marine and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Ghana, Accra.
“Consumers feel the effects of illegal fishing every time they go to the market,” he said.
“They just do not connect the dots between a missing species and what is happening offshore.”
Dr Agyekumhene said Ghana’s fish catch had declined significantly over recent decades.
The sardinella, which he used to prepare “Fante Fante”, a popular delicacy along the Central and Western coastal regions, was once among the cheapest and most abundant fish species in coastal markets. Today, it has become increasingly scarce and expensive.
According to the Environmental Justice Foundation, for every 10 sardinella that existed in Ghana’s waters three decades ago, only two remain today, with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warning that the fishery is close to collapse.
“What was a food for everyone is increasingly becoming a food for those who can afford it,” he said.
“What we are seeing now with sardinella is the cost of doing nothing. FiTI is not about making fish expensive. It is about making sure there is still fish to buy.”
The information the public cannot access
The FiTI Standard requires that available fisheries data and information are published in a way that is accessible and understandable to ordinary citizens, rather than being kept in government databases or presented in technical formats that are difficult to interpret.
Mr Philip Prah, an official of Friends of the Nation, a local non-governmental organisation, said Ghana’s progress towards that goal had been uneven.
He said key datasets, including a comprehensive public vessel registry showing companies and vessels licensed to operate in Ghanaian waters, were yet to be published in a form that met FiTI transparency standards.
“That means that right now, a curious consumer, a market trader, a journalist, or a concerned parent cannot easily look up whether the company supplying fish to their local market holds a valid licence, whether it has been flagged for violations, or how its reported catches compare to what is arriving at the docks,” he said.
Mr. Prah, who is a member of the National Multi-Stakeholder Group (NMSG), said earlier assessments had shown that some of the required information existed within government institutions but was not readily available to the public.
“Even if it becomes handy, the government must support the NMSG to create awareness among the public,” he added.
He suggested that funds generated from vessel fines could be considered as a possible source of support for NMSG activities.
A lesson from Seychelles
The Seychelles has earned recognition as the first country to achieve FiTI compliance status.
Ms Nathaniel Morel, Programme Development Officer at the Blue Economy Department of the Ministry of Fisheries, Agriculture and Blue Economy, Seychelles, told the GNA that the achievement was largely due to making fisheries information accessible to citizens.
“The compliance status means that we have most of our information out there on websites. Technical information, reports, and activities have been broken down and disseminated through social media. The media, short videos and other forms of content meet the needs of different groups,” she said.
“For instance, there are reels that answer questions such as how many people work in the fisheries sector, how big fishes should be, and how many vessels are in the sector. These are shared for everyone.”
Ms Morel, who also works with the FiTI National Secretariat, said government funding had enabled Seychelles’ National Multi-Stakeholder Group to ensure that stakeholders, including consumers, fishermen, processors and vessel owners, knew where to channel concerns within the sector.
She acknowledged that funding had initially been a challenge but said the Seychelles Fisheries Authority eventually supported the NMSG to undertake its work.
Ghana’s funding puzzle
For Ghana, however, turning its FiTI commitment into a fully functioning transparency system remains dependent on resources.
Madam Emelia Arthur, Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, told the GNA that the Government recognised the importance of transparency in managing the country’s fisheries resources and would make part of the Ministry’s goods and services allocation available to support NMSG activities.
“We are also working with Norway to revive a funding mechanism called the fish development fund that has expired to support some NMSG operations. When we said reset, reset also means transparency,” she said.
Dr Agyekumhene, however, expressed concern that no timeline had been provided for when the necessary support would be fully available.
The uncomfortable question hanging over Ghana’s FiTI commitment is whether increased transparency and stricter enforcement could initially affect the very consumers it seeks to protect.
Tighter enforcement of fishing regulations and licensing requirements could reduce the volume of fish reaching markets in the short term, potentially pushing prices upward.
But experts argue that the alternative is already being experienced.
The sardinella, once among the cheapest fish available to ordinary households, is becoming scarce because decades of poor management and unsustainable fishing practices have reduced its numbers.
For consumers, transparency would mean being able to know whether the fish they purchase comes from a legally operating supplier and whether the resources they depend on are being protected for future generations.
The stake on the plate
Back at Makola Market, Gifty Gyan wraps her mackerel in newspaper before heading home.
Asked whether she would want more information about where her fish comes from, she pauses.
“If it means my children will still have fish to eat in ten years, then yes,” she says.
“Tell me what I need to know.”
For Dr Agyekumhene, Gifty’s response captures the purpose of Ghana’s commitment to implement the FiTI Standard.
He said transparency was not only about publishing data but ensuring that information helped citizens understand and participate in decisions affecting a resource that supports livelihoods, food security and the economy.
The country’s fisherfolk, markets, dinner tables and ultimately its food security are waiting for that promise to be fulfilled.
By Albert Oppong-Ansah
