Women and youth at the fisheries table — not just on the value chain

Walk into any landing site at Magogoni, Kivukoni or Mbweni in Dar es Salaam — or down the coast at Mtwara Mikindani and Msangamkuu — and the picture is the same. Women and youth dominate the visible labour of the fishery: they receive the catch off the boats, sort and gut it, smoke and dry it, and carry it to the markets where most of Tanzania actually eats fish. By every reasonable measure, they are the value chain.

Yet when the same fishery sits down to make decisions — quota agreements, gear restrictions, BMU elections, revenue allocations, conflict resolution between artisanal and commercial fleets — the room thins out fast. In ASUTA's baseline mapping across Dar and Mtwara, women held fewer than one in five formal seats on Beach Management Units, and youth under 35 held even fewer. The labour is theirs; the authority is not.

This imbalance is not a question of capability. It is the predictable outcome of cultural norms that frame fisheries leadership as men's work, election rules that quietly favour boat-owners (who are overwhelmingly older men), and meeting schedules that ignore the hours when women are processing the day's catch. The result is a sector that runs on the unpaid and underpaid contributions of women and youth, while its rules are written without them in the room.

The half-day campaign in Dar es Salaam, mirrored by a parallel community dialogue in Mtwara, put four very specific demands on the table — each anchored to an existing law or policy so the asks are enforceable, not aspirational.

First, voting rights and reserved seats in BMUs. The Fisheries Act and BMU guidelines already allow it; what is missing is the political will to apply it. The campaign asked district fisheries officers in Temeke, Kigamboni and Mtwara Mikindani to publish a timeline for BMU re-elections that meets the 30% women and 20% youth thresholds.

Second, recognised seats in collaborative co-management committees — the bodies that decide on closed seasons, no-take zones and gear bylaws. Without a seat here, women and youth experience the rules but never shape them.

Third, access to capital, equipment and training. Most processors in both regions still work with open fires, second-hand sacks and zero cold-chain. Modest investment in solar dryers, ice and group savings facilities would lift incomes immediately. The campaign linked specific groups in Mtwara and Dar to existing district revolving funds they had never been told about.

Fourth, and most importantly, a working definition: participation means decision-making. Attendance is not participation. Being asked to cook for a meeting is not participation. Signing an attendance register is not participation.

The campaign was deliberately designed as the opening move of a longer Heshimu Bahari workstream on inclusive marine governance running through 2025. Follow-up commitments were captured in writing the same day and circulated to district authorities in both Dar and Mtwara within 72 hours.

In Dar es Salaam, three BMUs along the Temeke-Kigamboni stretch agreed to convene gender-balanced sub-committees on co-management ahead of the next fisheries season. In Mtwara, the regional fisheries officer requested a joint planning session with ASUTA to align the campaign demands with the region's own coastal development strategy.

The next phase pairs this advocacy with two practical supports: leadership skills training for the women and youth who will fill the new seats, and a tracking dashboard that publishes BMU composition data quarterly so progress (or its absence) is visible. Without measurement, demands like these quietly disappear.