Cape Town - The dream of a United States of Africa may be politically unobtainable, but African leaders are looking seriously at a second prize: an integrated maritime domain around the continent.
Such a domain would include an exclusive economic zone that would be key to the development of a sustainable “blue economy” for the continent. Today, each country with a coastline manages its 200 nautical mile zone, where it has full fishing and gas and mineral exploitation rights
Speaking at a symposium at UCT this week, Professor Patrick Vrancken of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, said this vision was contained in the 2050 African Integrated MaritimeStrategy presented to the second conference of African ministers responsible for maritime-related affairs in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in December.
The strategy recognised that fish made a vital contribution to the food and nutritional security of more than 200 million Africans and that there was an urgent imperative to develop a “blue economy”, he said.
He understood that the document was a draft that would be formally adopted by the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government, “hopefully still this year”.
Vrancken was speaking at a Fisheries Crime Symposium organised by the Institute of Marine and Environmental Law and the Marine Research Institute, both at UCT.
The one-day academic symposium was a warm-up for a two-day closed workshop between Interpol and law enforcement officials from the national Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, other Southern African Development Community fisheries departments and such South African agencies as the police, revenue service and maritime safety authority.
The thinking behind the proposal of an integrated maritime domain appeared to be that it would be easier to achieve than the mooted US of Africa, Vrancken suggested.
The strategy proposes a common fisheries policy for the conservation, management and exploitation of the continent’s marine resources. The draft urges all AU members to try to deter illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, as well as other criminal activities in the maritime domain, such as piracy and robbery at sea, human trafficking, illegal oil bunkering and crude oil theft, and illegal arms and drug trafficking.
Among the measures recommended for reducing and containing illegal fishing are:
l Effective licensing and control of vessels allowed to fish by flag states.
l Real-time positional reporting by licensed vessels.
l Surveillance and interception of irresponsible fishing by patrols.
Regional economic communities have been asked to develop a common strategy that would warrant “24/7 patrolling of the seas” involving effective communications and rapid response capabilities with offshore patrol vessels and fast inshore boats, maritime patrol aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, and helicopters for surveillance and deterrence.
Vrancken said the aim was to have the strategy in place by 2050. – Cape Argus