We used the time of our secondment for meeting a number of partners, who we hope to collaborate with. Basically, we postulated that Chinese fishing activities along the coasts of West Africa (including Senegal) has increased and has an impact on prospective on MSP. It also became institutionalised, contested and negotiated locally.

We use this secondment to meet a range of partners along the Senegalese coast, in the fishing sector. Mainly for explorative interviews with stakeholders in artisanal fisheries/fish-processing and observation to learn about the local context, degrees of informality, degrees of sensitivities regarding the topic of externally financed fishing/fish processing activities. We also have gathered some material for discourse analysis (contracts/fisheries-related local press reports) in Dakar and Saint-Louis. There was not enough time for a systematic empirical data collection exercise of course, but we have already met quite a broad range of the partners (mainly facilitated by Aliou Sall) and collected a lot of impressions. This will enable us to defend our project proposal better and reshape and sharpen it.

This will serve as a basis to contribute to the discussions on the role of informal governance in the field of MSP. Together with some of the additional work happening for the other proposal, we, with some confidence, will be able to write a first paper or to contribute to some led by others in the governance work package led by Hilde Toonen and Jose Gueirreiro.