Fishing resources depleting in Logone river; locals from Cameroon & Chad blame each other

In the Sahelian zone of west-central Africa, at the conjunction of Chad and Cameroon, the fast depleting fishing resources in the Logone river has become a matter of contention between the two African nations. Logone river has long been considered a rich source of artisanal fishing for the families on both sides. It generates 80 percent of their yearly 400,000-tonne catch according to WWF. But lately as the domestic industrial and artisanal fishing fleet boats accessed into the Logone’s waters, there was not much fish to be found. 

Locals in both Cameroon and Chad live off mainly from fishing as their main source of livelihood and food resource, but that option has been turning into a scarcity of late, making the two West African countries blaming each other for using “unsuitable fishing gear” that are extensive and have deprived the waters of the resource. The scarcity of fish resources has heightened tensions between both the countries among various other conflicts. 

Cameroonian and Chadian authorities under the Lake Chad Basin Commission met in Bongor on Sunday, a Chadian border town located two kilometers from the Cameroonian town of Yagoua, according to the Africa News. The key meeting mainly focused on the fishermen that are now battling the challenge of scarcity of fish in the lake as a result of which a conflict has arisen between the two sides. On August 8, the authorities asked the fishers to resolve the differences and live in peace. 

'People do not respect environmental sustainability,' says commissioner

"We can say that there are resources, only that people do not respect the environmental sustainability, because we always sign an order prohibiting fishing from 1 July to 30 September,” Manou Diguir, a commissioner told in his remarks to the Africa News. He elaborated that the three months break to fishing was agreed termed as called biological rest to enable the fish to reproduce and grow in its population. "However, some of them have been breaking the rules in quiet of the night as they go fishing," the commissioner added. Fish resources have also been declining in Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique creating widespread food insecurity in the belt. 

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