Institutional Changes, Technological Capabilities and Fish Exports from Uganda and the Gambia

Most works on the importance of fish as an agricultural commodity and its contributions to economic growth are focused on the developed countries. While developing countries have enjoyed substantial technological adaptation and upgrading such as Chile, Vietnam and China, the accounts are still limited to high middle income countries. In this paper, the authors assess the institutional and technological developments in the two least developed countries of Uganda and The Gambia by examining the fishery industry’s experience. There is compelling evidence that industrial specialisation and institutional development are critical in solving collective action problems to sustain technological capability development in Uganda. Although the country still lacks participation in the high value added segments of product development, marketing and R&D, Uganda benefited from government policy promoting industrial fishing and coordination to overcome the ban on fish imports by the European Union (EU) as the landing, packaging and testing centres responded positively by to complying with internationally accepted sanitary standards. With a focus on artisanal fishing, much of the fish exported from The Gambia either landed in neighbouring countries or carried foreign countries names when exported. Hence, the fishing industry in The Gambia lacked the capacity to respond to pressures from large overseas markets.