Posted on October, 26 2011

By John Kabubu, WWF Coastal East Africa Communications

Tanzania – WWF’s Rumaki Seascape programme is this year’s recipient of two prestigious ‘Association for Project Management’ awards in the UK.

WWF’s "Empowering Communities to Co-manage Fisheries in Coastal Tanzania" project undertaken in Tanzania’s coastal districts of Rufiji, Mafia and Kilwa, won the award for best ‘International Relief and Development Project of the Year’ which recognizes a project that has provided major benefit to a community.

“This programme has helped improve the social-economic well being of these communities”, said WWF’s Rumaki Programme Coordinator Josephine Mella. “They have learnt how to manage their fisheries by establishing a workable community-based management system to control fishing efforts and eliminate unsustainable fishing practices. The outcome of this is that fisheries stocks have increased, access to protein has improved and finances from fisheries are healthier allowing communities better purchasing power of goods and services. We have also introduced new mariculture technologies. The general well-being of the communities we work in has improved and this is what I am most proud of.”

A vehicle for effective change

The programme supported by WWF-UK, Department for International Development (DFID), Barclays Bank, WWF-Switzerland, the Japanese Social Development Fund, NORAD, GEF and the European Commission beat such competitors as British Telecom, Transport for London, Siemens and other commercial organizations to emerge top at the prestigious event held in London last week.

The project also won the BNFL Award for making an outstanding contribution to the development of project management as a vehicle for effective change.

Coastal Conservation

Currently, over 20 million people live along the Coastal East Africa shoreline and this number is expected to double before 2030. The survival of these people is highly dependent on the regions natural resources such as forests and fish.

WWF is working with partners at the local, national and regional level to secure a healthy environment along the coast of East Africa.

This will be achieved by:

• helping coastal communities sustainably manage natural resources for their own benefit;

• strengthening national legislation and management systems for sustainable fisheries and logging operations;

• improving habitat and species conservation; and

• developing effective marine protected areas.

The video below shows examples of some of WWF's work along the East African coast




The RUMAKI programme has been supported by WWF-UK through funding provided by DFID, EC and Barclays Bank and more widely by JSDF, NORAD, GEF and WWF-Switzerland.