Ghana | The Ocean Accounts Roadmap Workshop
Ocean Accounts Roadmap Workshop
Accra, Ghana | 13 Oct 2026 – 14 Oct 2026
I was privileged to represent my institute as a stakeholder at the Ocean Accounts Roadmap Workshop organised in Accra from 13th to 14th October. The workshop was convened by the Ghana SDG Advisory Unit of the Office of the President, the University of Cape Coast (UCC), and the Global Ocean Accounts Partnership (GOAP) to:
Agree on priority policy and community priorities that Ocean Accounts need to support
Map information, data, and governance requirements
Agree on the key decisions for the roadmap
The questions posed to the stakeholder participants were: what change Ghana’s stakeholders want to see, what information would help stakeholders make the decisions needed to get there, and which accounts could supply that information in a trusted, standardised way.
The workshop presented an opportunity for me to highlight data gaps regarding women's participation in Ghanaian fisheries and to inform data and research needs for developing an ocean account for Ghana. I backed my argument for the need for gender-segregated data on fish production (in both capture and culture sectors) with findings from my FAR-LeaF research and an earlier desktop study that produced a brief on ‘Gender data and information gaps in Ghana’s fisheries sector’. I was excited that bridging this data gap was considered one of the key decisions for the ocean accounts roadmap.
In addition to my contribution to the policy, I also formed some networks with other stakeholders in the ocean space. I connected with a fisher from the Ghana Canoe Council, with whom I discussed the prospects for a future study documenting indigenous knowledge in the Ghanaian marine fisheries sector, an area that emerged at the workshop as data-poor. I also connected with others working with women processors in the sector.
