Madagascar
Five governmental agencies and a rainy start
It may come as a surprise to hear that over 90% of Madagascar’s wildlife is found nowhere else on earth. Splitting off the Indian subcontinent around 88 million years ago, its relative isolation allowed the evolution of animals and plants to take their own course. Sadly however, deforestation and illegal logging over the past few decades have had a disastrous impact on its unique biodiversity.
This island - the fourth largest after Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo - is recognised as one of the world’s poorest nations and protecting the environment needs to be aligned with the challenge of growing the economy whilst addressing inequality and poverty. Protecting its environment, battling the smuggling of rose wood and curbing illegal fishing are but some of the challenges currently faced by the Madagascan authorities.
Government agencies are generally not known for their close co-operation, certainly not in a period of fiscal difficulty and struggling for limited resources. It is therefore an attest to the value of the combined exactTrax™ and AngelFish offering that within the scope of a single trial, five Madagascan government entities aligned and came out in strong support for an operational deployment of the trialed solution.
This is the story how this came to be.
“Who’s in charge?” is not a simple question
On a very wet morning during early March 2018, the first of 50 vessels taking part in the trial was equipped with one of our exactTrax™ compatible transponders. This was the formal start of the pilot project kindly funded by the United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA) under their International Partnership Programme (IPP) and would run for the remainder of that year.
Leading up to this point however, significant groundwork was required to ensure the buy-in and support of the various government bodies having a say in anything related to fishing. Considering that fishing remains one of the mainstays of the Madagascan economy, quite a number of institutions have mandates touching on this important sector.
Through several workshops and seminars, we worked with the following organisations to ensure their support for the trial:
CFIM – responsible for regional maritime security;
APFM – the agency dealing with ports and maritime traffic in general;
COFONA – the Madagascan Navy;
CSP – which effectively acts as the fisheries police; and finally
ARTEC – the radio licensing authority.
In addition to institutional support, a key element for a successful deployment is finding a local commercial partner with an entrepreneurial view of life and who is never short on ideas of how to solve unexpected challenges when they occur!
Without the passionate support from Ibonia, a Malagasy based Information Technology company, it would have been impossible to conclude such a successful trial. Playing a key role throughout the deployment phase they closely assisted with the information and training workshops - bridging the various language barriers that can often inhibit end-users becoming comfortable with the technology and use it as intended.
Trial results and next steps
The trial included both cargo and small-scale fishing vessels operating from three different sites: the chief seaport in Toamasina on the east coast as well as Sainte-Marie and the more well-known Nosy Be.
The technology was validated in the harshest of environments with an average of 10 positions per hour reported for each vessel. More importantly however – by the end of the trial all the government agencies attested to the value of the tracking system and expressed their desire for an operational roll-out to address challenges along three key national objectives:
Improving safety of life at sea for their small-scale fishermen to reduce the socio-economic impact when lives are lost at sea;
Increasing maritime security and surveillance to combat smuggling of rose wood, drugs, people and arms; and
To monitor changing fishing patterns to facilitate small-scale fisheries management.
With further financial support provided by the UKSA, we are very proud to support scaling up of operations in Madagascar.
