A European Union ban on seafood from Cameroon is prompting local fleets to look toward China for investment, according to Edwin Ngwafor, who is the director of Timezone Marine Ventures, a Yaoundé-based firm with a permit for 40 vessels.

Ngwafor, who is also the deputy managing partner at a Cameroonian law firm, wants to attract a Chinese partner who can bring money and expertise to a joint venture project that would aim to sell species including barracuda, sole, tuna, and shrimp to local markets and abroad in Asia.

This comes as the E.U. in January 2023 designated Cameroon a “noncooperating country,” barring its fishery products from entering European markets because the country continues to register fishing vessels operating outside its waters without sufficiently monitoring their activities.

SeafoodSource spoke with Ngwafor about how Cameroonian fishing efforts aim to respond and adapt to the red card ban and what he personally aims to accomplish with his own fishing ventures.

SeafoodSource: Why do you seek new access to Asia? Would it not be better to fix the problems highlighted by the E.U. and retain access to that valuable market?

Ngwafor: The economic relationship between China and Africa is not a secret, and this is true across all sectors. China has played active roles in Africa in infrastructure projects, trade and commerce, telecommunications, defense, and security. Many fishing companies in Cameroon have focused on partnerships with China, especially following the unfortunate sanction meted out recently against Cameroon by the E.U.

Following the E.U. ban, local fishing companies in Cameroon have found the necessity to adapt and survive irrespective. They provide employment and sources of income to hundreds of thousands of people, and this is crucial for the local economy. Local companies believe the fostering and advancement of their partnerships with Asia in general, and China in particular, provide a viable commercial alternative which will, in turn, enable the realization of their business objectives.

This by no means implies that the Cameroonian government is resting on its laurels in the process to restore its credibility and relationship with the E.U. To address the problem, the [Cameroon] Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries is collaborating with other organizations to launch a project entitled “Stop IUU [illegal, unregulated, unreported] fishing in Cameroon.”

The project is implemented in collaboration with other institutions, such as Global Fishing Watch and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, along with Cameroon’s Ministry of Transport and the National Navy. There have also been several consultation meetings for the revision of the Cameroonian law on the governance of fishing and aquaculture and an inventory of the Cameroonian fishing fleet.

SeafoodSource: What is the opportunity for Chinese companies for fishing in Cameroon?

Ngwafor: There are wide-ranging opportunities in the sector for international fishing companies, including Chinese companies, especially given the fact that Cameroon continues to be unable to meet the nutritional needs in fishery products of the population, which are estimated at nearly 500,000 tons annually. Also, Cameroon is situated in a unique geographical location, which provides a varied diversity in fishery products and is favorable to quick export through the Douala Seaport, the main seaport in the CEMAC [Economic Community of Central African States] subregion.

Cameroon has a global reputation for the quality of its shrimp, which is highly prized in international markets. In addition to all these, there are several investment opportunities in niche areas, such as setting up industrial units for shrimp and fish, distribution chains, manufacturing fishing equipment, processing, and packaging units for fisheries products, as well as assembly plants for fishing vessels.

SeafoodSource: Are you worried about various controversies in Ghana and Senegal featuring Chinese fleets overfishing and illegally fishing?

Ngwafor: The court cases in Ghana are an example such as the cases in the Spanish courts in Europe. These cases are specific in their own facts. Our company is not discouraged by the events in Ghana, as we believe these are unique and not wholly reflective of the general ethos of Chinese fishing companies.

There are thousands of Chinese companies engaged in fisheries partnerships all over the world, and if a fraction of these are naughty, it must not taint the image of those who are ethically sound. Our company is open to do business with responsible partners, including Chinese companies, and commits to adhere to local and international requirements against IUU fishing as we seek to establish a strong and respected global reputation.

SeafoodSource: Don’t you think it would be far more valuable for you to catch and market the fish as a local firm rather than selling or renting licenses to a foreign investor?

Ngwafor: It will be …

Culled from SeafoodSource

The World Bank Group has begun work to assess the business and investment climate in up to 180 economies under its flagship Business Ready project—a key instrument of its new strategy to facilitate private investment, generate employment, and improve productivity to help countries accelerate development in inclusive and sustainable ways.

Business Ready improves upon and replaces the World Bank Group’s earlier Doing Business project. It reflects a more balanced and transparent approach toward evaluating a country’s business and investment climate—one that has been shaped by recommendations from experts from within and outside the World Bank Group, including governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations. The first annual Business Ready report, covering 54 economies, will be published in the Spring of 2024.

Today, the World Bank Group published two key documents: the Business Ready Manual and Guide, specifying the detailed protocols and safeguards it has put in place to ensure the integrity of the assessments; and the Business Ready Methodology Handbook, detailing the project’s indicators and scoring methodology. Data collection on the business environment of the initial 54 economies is being done through extensive consultations with regulatory experts and nationally representative World Bank Enterprise Surveys, collected by competitively selected survey companies.

“The World Bank Group is bringing back a fuller and sharper measure of the investment climate of countries—something that is badly needed in a global economy in the midst of a generalized slowdown,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. “Governments that do more to make their economies business-ready will do better in reviving private investment, creating jobs, and quickening the transition to cleaner energy.”

The World Bank Group has long been a leader in spurring business-regulatory reforms across the world. Its assessments of the business-enabling environment worldwide helped spur nearly 4,000 regulatory reforms in developing and developed economies over the past two decades. They also significantly advanced academic research in this area, resulting in 4,000 peer-reviewed research papers and at least 10,000 working papers. Countries, moreover, often use these assessments to shape their development strategies.

“The ‘Business Ready’ project represents a new approach to assessing the business and investment climates,” said Norman Loayza, Director of the World Bank’s Indicators Group, which leads the project. “The ‘Business Ready’ approach aims to establish a better balance between the ease of conducting a business and the broader implications for society as a whole. It gives a more positive role for governments, advocating for better public services for businesses. In addition to experts’ assessments, it includes direct information from entrepreneurs and managers on their experience navigating the economy’s business environment.”

Business Ready focuses on 10 topics covering the lifecycle of a firm in the course of starting, operating, or closing or reorganizing its activities: Business Entry, Business Location, Utility Services, Labor, Financial Services, International Trade, Taxation, Dispute Resolution, Market Competition, and Business Insolvency. Over the next three years, the project will grow to cover about 180 economies worldwide annually, starting with 54 economies in 2023-24, 120 economies in 2024-25, and reaching 180 economies in 2025-26.

The project’s objective is reflected in its name—to make each country’s economic environment ready for a dynamic private sector. The name highlights the fact that economies exist in different stages of readiness, and that governments play a key role in creating a business environment that is conducive for sustainable development.

Transparency will be a key feature of Business Ready’s safeguards for data integrity. All information collected by the project—raw granular data, scores, as well as the calculations used to obtain the scores—will be made publicly available on the project website. Moreover, all results presented in the reports will be replicable using straightforward toolkits available on the website.

Populations across the globe are aging at an unprecedented pace, making many countries increasingly reliant on migration to realize their long-term growth potential, according to a new report from the World Bank.

The World Development Report 2023: Migrants, Refugees, and Societies, identifies this trend as a unique opportunity to make migration work better for economies and people. Wealthy countries as well as a growing number of middle-income countries—traditionally among the main sources of migrants—face diminishing populations, intensifying the global competition for workers and talent. Meanwhile, most low-income countries are expected to see rapid population growth, putting them under pressure to create more jobs for young people.

“Migration can be a powerful force for prosperity and development,” said World Bank Senior Managing Director Axel van Trotsenburg. “When it is managed properly, it provides benefits for all people — in origin and destination societies.”

In the coming decades, the share of working-age adults will drop sharply in many countries. Spain, with a population of 47 million, is projected to shrink by more than one third by 2100, with those above age 65 increasing from 20% to 39% of the population. Countries like Mexico, Thailand, Tunisia and Türkiye may soon need more foreign workers because their population is no longer growing.

Beyond this demographic shift, the forces driving migration are also changing, making cross-border movements more diverse and complex. Today, destination and origin countries span all income levels, with many countries such as Mexico, Nigeria, and the U.K. both sending and receiving migrants. The number of refugees nearly tripled over the last decade. Climate change threatens to fuel more migration. So far, most climate-driven movements were within countries, but about 40% of the world’s population—3.5 billion people—lives in places highly exposed to climate impacts.

Current approaches not only fail to maximize the potential development gains of migration, they also cause great suffering for people moving in distress. About 2.5% of the world’s population—184 million people, including 37 million refugees—now live outside their country of nationality. The largest share—43%—lives in developing countries.

The report underscores the urgency of managing migration better. The goal of policymakers should be to strengthen the match of migrants’ skills with the demand in destination societies, while protecting refugees and reducing the need for distressed movements. The report provides a framework for policymakers on how to do this.

“This World Development Report proposes a simple but powerful framework to aid the making of migration and refugee policy,” said Indermit Gill, Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. “It tells us when such policies can be made unilaterally by destination countries, when they are better made plurilaterally by destination, transit and origin countries, and when they must be considered a multilateral responsibility.”

Origin countries should make labor migration an explicit part of their development strategy. They should lower remittance costs, facilitate knowledge transfers from their diaspora, build skills that are in high demand globally so that citizens can get better jobs if they migrate, mitigate the adverse effects of “brain drain,” protect their nationals while abroad, and support them upon return.

Destination countries should encourage migration where the skills migrants bring are in high demand, facilitate their inclusion, and address social impacts that raise concerns among their citizens. They should let refugees move, get jobs, and access national services wherever they are available.

International cooperation is essential to make migration a strong force for development. Bilateral cooperation can strengthen the match of migrants’ skills with the needs of destination societies. Multilateral efforts are needed to share the costs of refugee-hosting and to address distressed migration. Voices that are underrepresented in the migration debate must be heard: this includes developing countries, the private sector and other stakeholders, and migrants and refugees themselves.