Also present were representatives of the fisheries cooperatives and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The Director General of the Federal Ministry of Marine Resources Fisheries, Mr. Mohamoud Sheikh Abdullahi officially opened the event with some encouraging words to the group.
The FDCWG project is a nationwide fisheries catch data collection project that Secure Fisheries is coordinating as a service provider to the FAO. It involves the collection of catch data from several locations along the Somali coast by data collection teams trained to work according to standardized protocol. The data is stored in a database housed at Secure Fisheries to which the Federal and Regional Fisheries Ministries have access and will serve decision-makers as the basis for fisheries management plans in the near future.
During the workshop the participants were trained in the use of an electronic application, developed by Paige Roberts, which has replaced the paper data forms that were used in Phase 1 of the project. The application will allow the data enumerators to send their data directly to the regional Ministry’s database, making the process more efficient.
The workshop was a crucial part of an effort to further build the technical capacities of the Fisheries Ministries, giving them the training and tools to take control of the national data collection effort. A roadmap is being developed with the stakeholders that will oversee this important transition.
