The Tanji fish market in The Gambia is a about a half hour outside of Banjul, the tiny nation’s capital. It’s a busy place, even on a rainy day, with boats arriving from not only The Gambia, but Ghana and Senegal as well.
While much of the fish are immediately packed into ice filled baskets for restaurants in Banjul and other cities along the coast, some of the bonga (a staple fish, similar to shad), barracuda, tuna, suyo, crouper, and ladyfish are preserved on site. Low-roofed buildings throughout the market house wood burning ovens. Fish are carefully arranged on top of these ovens for smoking and drying, a process that usually takes about five days. Then these fish, too, are piled into baskets, covered with newspaper and packed into trucks to be sold throughout Western Africa.
To read more about innovations in fishing, fish processing, and fish markets, see: The Future of our Food System: Our Changing Climate and Food Availability, Fighting Two Battles with One Dialogue, Fishing for Innovations that Conserve Fisheries, Turning the Catch of the Day into Improved Livelihoods for the Whole Community, Tapping Local Ingenuity to Raise Fish and Livestock, Working with the Root, “Greening” Fisheries Could Calm Troubled Waters, and Fishing for Recognition and Support.
Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on livestock and sustainability, currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank. Her knowledge of factory farming and its global spread and sustainable agriculture has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and
other publications.
Danielle worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She is currently traveling across Africa looking at innovations that are working to alleviate hunger and poverty and blogging everyday at Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet. She has a regular column with the Mail & Guardian, the Kansas City Star, and the Huffington Post and her writing was been featured in newspapers across Africa including the Cape Town Argus, the Zambia Daily Mail, Coast Week (Kenya), and other African publications. She holds an M.S. in agriculture, food, and environment from Tufts University and a B.A. in environmental policy from Monmouth College.
