Fish Fighting Hunger

A Burkina Faso and Austrian partnership on sustainable fisheries and water management is fighting hunger in Sub Saharan Africa. The appear project SUSFISH and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the University of Ouagadougou and the BOKU are contributing to strengthen collaboration in building scientific capacities in higher education in Burkina Faso. As a first result of this partnership four Austrian “Applied Limnology” students got a BOKU KUWI scholarship and the opportunity to do their master thesis field work in Burkina Faso. For three months they sampled fish and benthic invertebrates together with colleagues from the University of Ouagadougou in the Upper Volta river basin. Their theses have already been supervised by both universities. In return three Burkinabe doctoral- and one master students, funded by an appear scholarship; will start their studies at BOKU this semester. They are especially integrated into the “Applied Limnology” Masters program. These activities are undertaken as part of a three-year APPEAR project, named SUSFISH (Sustainable Management of Water and Fish Resources in Burkina Faso) that is financed by the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC). Appear the “Austrian Partnership Programme in Higher Education and Research for Development” is operated by the Austrian OeAD together with LAI (Latin America Institute). The project’s aim is to promote sustainable water management and fisheries towards socio economic development and poverty reduction in West Africa in higher education. SUSFISH was launched in November 2011 and is being undertaken by a consortium of seven institutions in Burkina Faso and Austria. Additionally, among others, there is also a close cooperation with the French development program ‘IRD G-eau’ and ERA ARD II network. This June the BOKU Institute of Hydrobiology and Aquatic Ecosystem Management (IHG), the Centre for Development Research (CDR) and the Institut Français de Vienne jointly  organized a symposium to review scientific research on how to make inland fisheries and water management sustainable in West Africa and how to use these ideas and tools to build capacity in academia, government and among local practitioners. Speakers came from 12 different scientific and public institutions, working in theory and practice on concepts of life sciences, development research, biology, ecology, food security, sociology, anthropology, medicine, education, gender, system analyses and political topics. A book of abstracts and all presentations are online available at
http://susfish.boku.ac.at/download.htm Sustainable Fisheries Fighting Hunger in Burkina Faso