In July 2020, the Resource and Environmental Policy Research Centre (REPRC - EFD Nigeria) organized a crash course on Natural Resources Bio-Economics with focus on Fisheries Management for academics, graduate students from the University of Nigeria Nsukka, along with research fellows of EfD Nigeria, and a Senior Environmental Officer from the World Bank. The online course was organized in collaboration with the Environment and Natural Resource Research Initiative (ENNRI, EfD - Ghana). The course which lasted for eight days was developed and delivered by Prof Wisdom Akpalu, the Director of ENNRI and a leading fisheries expert.
The course explored several key concepts in capture fisheries management, including topics such as: Concepts of Cost, Revenue, Profit in Fisheries Economics; Discrete and Continuous Time Discounting; Static Equilibrium and Yield Functions. Others are: Property Rights and Renewable Resource Extraction; Policy instruments to regulate Overfishing: Destructive Fishing and Economic Rents from Fisheries, among others. About 20 persons attended the course.
Commenting on the course, the Director of EfD-Nigeria, Dr Nnaemeka Chukwuone, who coordinated the program said: “the aim of this course is to strengthen the capacity of researchers and post graduate students and equip them to carryout research projects in fisheries resource management, an area that is currently receiving limited attention and which Nigeria requires evidence based policy in order to tap into its huge potential to contribute to Nigeria’s economic development.” He thanked Prof Akpalu for delivering the course which the participants provided a lot of positive feedback.
Commenting on the collaboration with REPRC-EfD Nigeria, Prof Akpalu said: “This is a valuable collaboration. The positive outcomes from this program indicate that joint efforts like this one will be highly useful in facilitating productive exchanges and learning for the benefit of EfD stakeholders across different countries.”