Paddle your own canoe

'If you don't have a canoe,' says Michel Adjibang, 'you'll always remain poor'. This is a fact of life in Ere – a village lying on the banks of the River Logone, surrounded by flooded rice fields in Chad. This 7,000-strong community relies on a precarious combination of fishing and farming for its livelihood. Nets are essential too, along with the smoking ovens which preserve the fish for taking to market.

Michel Adjibang is the president of Walta, a community-based organisation whose name means 'to take responsibility for yourself'. This is precisely what they are doing with the support of the DFID-backed Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme (SFLP) in West Africa managed by the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

At the fishermen's request a new canoe-building technique has been developed using locally available planks – easier to use and kinder on the environment than earlier craft hewn from increasingly scarce tree trunks. Trainers have shown local carpenters how to build the canoes, and a micro-credit scheme helps fishermen buy canoes and nets.

With what I earn from fishing, I invest a part of it in farming,' says one fisherman. 'I even get to hire extra hands sometimes. Today my children are in school; and it is what I earn from fishing that even helps me to care for myself'.

A fishy business

A visit to the Cameroon identified a new design of the fish-smoking oven allowing more fish to be smoked to a higher standard, using less fuel and providing protection from the elements and foraging animals. Sixty local women formed a fishmongers' group receiving credit facilities for building ovens and buying fish.

'Before I bought fish… but only in small quantities', says Kady Alhere Bitrus. 'This could not get me very far. But the loan changed all that. Now we even go as far as N'Djamena (the capital of Chad), with a large quantity of our smoked fish. And we get a good price'.

Trading around Lake Chad

The capacity to improve and expand fisheries in this village is emblematic of what SFLP is developing across the Lake Chad basin. This Lakeland region which covers some 2000 sq km and a further 4000 sq km of swampland, contains 140 species of fish. Thousands of small scale, informal fisheries comprise a valuable trade linking the Lake Chad Basin inland fisheries to the urban markets of southern Nigeria – producing around 119,000 tonnes of processed fish a year to the value of $54 million. These operations run by nationals from the six states which share the lake and river sides (Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Chad, Central Africa Republic and Sudan), give the trade a major regional and international significance.

Training and micro-credit have made a vital difference to livelihoods in Ere and news of the improved ovens has spread across Chad. The Walta group has entertained many visitors eager to discover this new technology and improve their own prospects of profitable trade and a better quality of life.

Key facts

• This was a DFID-funded project that began in August 2002 and ended in July of 2005
• The total budget of the project was $16,540 (USD) and came under the regional Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme funded by DFID, and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and 25 countries in West and Central Africa.

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