A tall blue entrance marks the beginning of the Mole 10 fishing harbour in Dakar, Senegal’s capital city. Inside is evidence of many international interests. There is a fishmonger called Seoul Pêche, or Seoul fishing. There are other buildings marked with Chinese characters, as well as ships with Chinese names, and at least one in Arabic.
Among them are the Senegalese trade unionists.
In an office, inside a centrally located grey building, sits Yora Kane, secretary general of SAGMS, a union for seafarers affiliated with the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF).
“The fishing sector in Senegal now has a lot of problems,” the 70-year-old explains. Fishing at all levels of the sea has been affected by “scarcity”.
“There are no more fish,” he adds. “It’s because of bad policy that we are suffering.”
Kane says the unions have asked the Senegalese government to enforce rest periods of one or two months where no one is allowed to fish, to give the fish a chance to reproduce. They want the government to develop aquaculture.
“On top of that there’s the delivery of fishing licences [the government] provide[s] to foreign vessels without considering the state of the sea,” Kane says. In particular, he’s referring to Chinese ships.
While Senegalese fishermen are employed on Chinese industrial vessels, Kane says wages are low, hours are long and exhausting, they often do not get the required number of rest days when the ship returns to port, and their social security contributions often go unpaid. “The impact is tiredness and some have health problems and there are accidents because people are so tired, worn out and they still have to work.”
Kane estimates there are 3,000 Senegalese fishers working on industrial vessels and 60,000 in the fishing industry – other estimates have the number of Senegalese employed directly or indirectly at 10 times that. Fishers tend to be men, with women more likely to process, smoke or dry fish and sell it.
Artisanal fishers have particular problems. Their boats are too old, Kane says. Because they can’t find fish within six nautical miles, as they did before, they now often go twice the distance from the shore, which increases both the dangers and the amount of money they spend on fuel. “There are a lot of accidents and a lot of people die,” Kane explains. “They sometimes collide with industrial vessels and… sometimes they have accidents because they can’t see. They go to sea without navigational aids and lights.”
Malik Diop, co-ordinator for the West Africa fisheries organising project, works with Kane, as well as other trade unionists across Ghana, Nigeria and Ivory Coast. His work is financed by the ITF and the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO Norway).
“We have never had such a project trying to organise fishers,” he says about his mission, which began in 2021. Trade unionists in different countries are beginning to exchange ideas related to how they can improve their catches and working conditions. “Before this everybody was minding their own businesses,” he says.
In particular, Diop’s project is attempting to reach out to artisanal fishers, who use small boats, called pirogues, and usually work for themselves. “It’s important to get them unionised and train them on their rights,” he says.
Michael O’Brien, the ITF’s fisheries campaign lead for Ireland, says the organisation has prioritised west Africa and southeast Asia in recent years. “In west Africa, there are millions struggling to maintain a living through artisanal fishing,” he says. “The challenge is wielding those masses into a powerful political lobby that can challenge the practice of most governments in the region of trading away fishing rights to big Chinese and European interests.”