WOMEN ON FISHING

Women are very important in development of small scale fishing industry. Regardless of their social responsibility to serve families, they are taken part as fish vendors to the local market in town and to the inland Districts. However, the women are also faced with inadequate accessibility to the financial resources and post harvesting handling technology as stated above.

Although there are some few women groups which are directly engaging in fishing anchors at sea shore, this activity is considered unacceptable due to the use of mosquito nets which collect juvenile fish. As a result it has never received any attention from government and development supporters. While some fishers in the Mnazi Bay Ruvuma Estuary Marine Park (MBREMP) area claimed to have received some support from authority the women groups have never given any attention.

Therefore, KIMWAM has planned for the forthcoming program the efforts to be made should consider improving women activities in fishing. This should include improvement of processing technology and storage capacity which will go hand by hand with improvement of their capacity to exploit available markets at inland Districts.

**KIMWAM is therefore, calling for stakeholders, donors, partners and other important actors on women empowerment for joining these efforts for supporting women**