National fisheries and maritime economy strategy - mid-term evaluation

Client: Mauritania - Ministry of fisheries (MPEM - Ministère de la pêche et de l'économie maritime)

Project Dates: May 2019 - December 2019

Project objectives:
Poseidon, in association with his local partner Maurifish as a consortium, evaluated the 2015-2019 national fisheries strategy in Mauritania.

The external and mid-term evaluation of the 'National Responsible Management Strategy for Sustainable Development of Fisheries and the Maritime Economy for the period 2015-2019' (the 'Sector Strategy' 2015-2019) focused on its first three years of implementation, i.e. over the period 2016-2018; the Strategy having been adopted at the end of 2015 and implemented from January 2016.

The consortium carried out the evaluation of behalf of the Ministry of Fisheries and Maritime Economy (MPEM) with the financial support of the Regional Fisheries Program in Africa West Bank in Mauritania (PRAO-MR) of the World Bank.

Poseidon services provided:
The assessment took place from May to July 2019 essentially. The provisional findings of the evaluation took place in Nouadhibou (Mauritania) in October during a 1-day workshop where they were presented to a large panel of local stakeholders in presence of the Minister of Fisheries and Maritime Economy. The final report included comments and views received during the workshop.

The team consisted of:

a fisheries management expert and team leader (contracted by Poseidon),
an economist (contracted by Maurifish),
a fisheries expert (Director of Poseidon),
a specialist in evaluating fisheries projects (Director of Maurifish), and
a fisheries scientist (contracted by Maurifish).

The team had to:

(i) evaluate the sector performances based on macro-indicators;

(ii) identify the results in terms of effective implementation, axis by axis, of the various programmed actions; and

(iii) identify the main constraints that hindered the implementation of certain actions as well as the opportunities that facilitated the conduct of duly undertaken actions.

Additionally to the tasks above, the evaluation team provided a list of lessons learned to achieve significant performance improvement over the remaining programmatic time horizon and a set of recommendations to facilitate the preparation of the new 2020-2024 Strategy.