Managing small-scale marine fishing units in Senegal: the SEPROM case

The question

In 1982 the Senegalese state launched a programme to bring young graduates into self-employment. In fisheries, twenty-five companies were created. Ten years later, two had survived, one of them the Société d'exploitation des produits de la mer.

The question is blunt: how can a company built under formal law — articles of association, commercial register, chart of accounts — thrive in a sector everyone calls informal? And why did the other twenty-three fail?

How we worked

Six months of fieldwork, drawing on data from the Dakar-Thiaroye oceanographic research centre. The company's income and expenditure ledgers were reconstructed and restated under the chart of accounts to produce financial statements from 1986 to 1992. Interviews and discussions, formal and informal, with crews, management, and fishers met on the beaches of Hann, Mbour and Bargny.

The context

By 1989 marine fishing had become Senegal's leading source of export earnings, ahead of groundnut and phosphates. Landings reached 370,000 tonnes in 1991, 73 % of them from small-scale fishing alone. The sector employed 45,000 fishers and generated close to 150,000 shore-based jobs. A Senegalese then ate 26 kilos of fish a year — 45 kilos in the Dakar region — against 12 kilos of meat.

What we found

Survival rests on sharing, not control

The company pays not a wage but a share of the catch. Three choices, contrary to orthodox management, explain its resilience. When takings are poor, common costs are not fully deducted, so as to protect the fishers' income. The canoe's share goes to the skipper, the engine's share is redistributed by him to his closest collaborators. Apprentices receive half a share.

More striking still: the control function was removed from management activities in 1988. The study identifies that removal as what established a climate of trust between management and skippers — precisely what the failed companies lacked.

Roots in the community

The company is jointly run by three graduates. One of them comes from the small-scale fishing community. The study concludes that this belonging played a decisive role in the company's survival where others foundered.

But a declining financial position

The diagnosis is not indulgent. The number of trips with a catch falls year on year, under the effect of overfishing of pelagic stocks on the Petite-Côte. Return on assets stands at 13 % — while agricultural credit was then offered at 15.5 %. Borrowing meant destroying value.

The credit was mis-calibrated from the start

The study establishes that the financing structure of the insertion programme was unsuited to the sector: neither the rate nor the term of the loans allowed the new companies to generate a profit covering financial charges. The failure of twenty-three companies out of twenty-five is not first a management failure — it is a design flaw in the scheme.

What we recommended

1. Do not alter the share system, despite its opportunity cost: the social climate depends on it
2. Reduce cash withdrawals and fixed costs to move away from break-even
3. Do not borrow above the return on assets
4. Undertake operational research on the most productive fishing grounds and seasons
5. Do not transpose formal management models — fixed monthly salaries — into a sector with extreme swings in output and prices
6. At national level, choose between fishing beyond the optimal level and introducing catch quotas on the Petite-Côte

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