Abalobi, an app to help small-scale fishermen in South Africa monitor catches

Abalobi, which is Xhosa name for fishermen, is as a mobile application for the small-scale fishermen to let them produce their own knowledge on fishing and build resilient communities in the face of climate change.

There are currently 30,000 artisanal fishers along South Africa's coastline making their living from the sea and living on a thin line between commercial and subsistence fishing.

The innovation of Abalobi is the fact that small-scale fishermen can record what they caught, when, where, using what method and how much they sold the fish for. All that information is stored in the app and made available to other small-scale fishers.

Abalobi was co-produced by the University of Cape Town, traditional fishers and the new small-scale fisheries unit in the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF). The project has been developed thanks to the cooperation of mobile phone network Vodacom.

Abalobi is currently available on Google Play.

Source: Abalobi