New recreational, sanitary, and educational facilities are being built at the communities’ request to complement the investments in coastal infrastructure. Eleven lighthouses that had fallen in disrepair were renovated and equipped with more long-lasting, solar-powered technology. These include investments in breakwaters, seawalls, road rehabilitation, boat ramps and new, safer housing for people exposed to storm surges and rising tides. Physical investments, financed by the International Development Association (IDA) under the multi-donor West Africa Coastal Areas Resilience Program (WACA) managed by the World Bank, focus on 12 artisanal fishing communities on the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe. About 223,000 people live on the archipelago and about 15.4% of the population falls under the international poverty line. The kits are part of a broad menu of interventions that are helping build greater resilience and reduce poverty in the small island state of São Tomé and Príncipe (STP). Safety-at-sea kits that include GPS, sealed pockets to protect electronics, lifejackets and training, have been distributed to about 3,000 fishers (out of an estimated 4,125 fishers) under successive World Bank projects. Célcio Dias – known as Mano, on the right, relies on a GPS to return safely home. Now that I have a GPS, my family is much less worried.”Īs oceanic changes force fishers to go further from the coast, they are exposed to more danger. Some got lost, some drifted to foreign countries, and some died. When I started fishing, I did not have a GPS. A 30-year-old fisherman from Praia Melão in the suburbs of São Tomé, Mano explained: “From the beach, the sea may look friendly but when you sail in deep waters it’s dangerous and scary. “It’s my god,” affirmed categorically Célcio Dias – known as Mano. In May, it’s the turn of the fishers of Neves, a town on the northwest coast of São Tomé, to ward off bad luck and officially open the flying fish season by throwing their first catch up in the air when they return to shore, for people to share and eat.īut year-round, the protection that fishers depend on the most is certainly their Global Positioning System (GPS). A priest at the head of the maritime procession carries the image of Saint Peter, the fisherman and apostle, to invoke the miraculous catch described in the Bible and ask for Saint Peter’s protection. Every January, about 60 small fishing boats head out from the main beach of the town of São Tomé, the capital of São Tomé and Príncipe, a small island state in the Gulf of Guinea, off the west coast of Africa.
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