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West Africa has an extensive coastline stretching 7,367 km over 12 mainland countries and two archipelagos. The region’s coastal and marine ecosystems are among the most productive and biologically diverse in the world. However, the ocean resources are under intense anthropogenic pressures encompassing pollution, habitat degradation, biodiversity loss, overfishing, and climate-change-induced sea level rise. These challenges call for science-based and community-led actions to reverse current negative trends. Unfortunately, poor capacity to understand West Africa’s ocean is an age-old struggle by scientists in the region, and it remains among the least studied globally.
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Building Ocean Science Capacity in Africa: Impacts and Challenges
Capacity sharing in the ocean sciences is essential for addressing pressing environmental challenges and fostering sustainable stewardship of marine ecosystems. This article focuses on three important capacity-sharing programs operating in Africa: Early Career Ocean Professionals (ECOP) Africa, Citizen Observation of Local Litter in Coastal Ecosystems (COLLECT) (a project of the Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean), and Mundus Maris Africa. ECOP Africa, a pioneering platform for early career ocean professionals, emphasizes mentorship, training, and knowledge exchange to empower young marine scientists across the continent. Through dynamic programs and events, ECOP Africa is catalyzing interdisciplinary collaboration and inspiring the next generation of ocean leaders. Similarly, COLLECT leverages citizen science to tackle plastic pollution in coastal environments. By training secondary school students as “citizen scientists,” COLLECT has not only generated critical data on the distribution and abundance of coastal debris but also fostered environmental awareness and local engagement. These initiatives demonstrate the power of inclusive, community-driven approaches to capacity sharing in the ocean sciences. They highlight the transformative potential of combining open science, education, and international collaboration to address global challenges such as plastic pollution and climate change while empowering local communities to take active roles in preserving their marine environments.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2318309
- PAR ID:
- 10599679
- Publisher / Repository:
- The Oceanography Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Oceanography
- Volume:
- 38
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1042-8275
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2025.133
