The Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) is to train more fishermen under its fish-finder programme, as it looks to increase the volume of fish harvested from the Atlantic Ocean, Kwabena Owusu Akyeampong-Administrator of GIFEC, has said.

“We will continue with the fishing programme, because we think that there are a lot more fishermen that we haven’t reached along the four coastal areas. So we will do more fish-finders and this time introduce the Global Positioning System (GPS) which allows fishermen to go to a particular site do their fishing and come back.

“The fish-finders programme allows us to help fishermen try and locate fish. This requires some training before the fish-finders are eventually given out to them,” Mr. Akyempong told the B&FT.

With an about-521-kilometre coastline, the country is currently a net importer of fish. In 2013, half of the domestic fish requirement of 900,000 metric tonnes was imported.

As at the end of 2014, fish consumption had reached a million metric tonnes -- an increase of 100,000 tonnes over the 2013 figure.

Currently, only 400,000 metric tonnes is supplied from the country’s catches at sea and through aquaculture production, with the rest bridged by imports at a cost of about US$200million every year.

Given the limited technology used by fishermen in the country for fishing -- largely the use of wooden canoes fitted with outboard motors, reliance on experience and guess-work to locate ideal fishing spots, and the practice of mounting flags in wooden canoes to serves as a guide --the on-going fish-finder programme will help improve the catch and narrow the deficit in fish production.

Fish-finders use sonar technology to show what is directly below a fishermen’s boat or canoe. This makes it possible for fishermen to locate spots where there is a significant amount of fish for harvesting.

“We are also exploring the opportunity of introducing the ‘fisherman-link’. This system allows fishermen to be able to tune-in and ask for directions where they are located, that will bring them back to base,” he said.

GIFEC, he explains, will demarcate the entire coastline into four or five zones and set up the fisherman-link site in each zone along the coast. “There’s a 521km coastline, hence we will break it up so they can all be in sync at the same time,” head of GIFEC said.

The Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) was created in 2014 under the Ghana ICT Policy for Accelerated Development as an implementing agency of the Ministry of Communications, to facilitate the provision of ICT, Internet connectivity and infrastructure to underserved and un-served areas of the country.

The Electronic Communications Act 775 promulgated in 2008 gave legal backing to the agency, changed the agency’s name to the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communication (GIFEC), and widened the scope of its mandate to include the provision of access to electronic services including ICT, broadcasting, Internet, multimedia service, and basic telephony for the unserved and underserved communities in Ghana.