Transparency in fisheries management is essential to strengthen data-driven management and improve blue finance, and is also key for oversight, informed public debates, and effective and inclusive participation in decision-making processes. The Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI) International Secretariat has published the findings of its 2022 Taking Stock Assessment of Comoros, presenting an inventory of the information on fisheries that national authorities in the Indian Ocean archipelago available on government websites. Overall, the assessment shows that while Comoros has published some fisheries information online, significant progress is still required to provide sufficient transparent information to meet the FiTI Standard. However, challenges in transparency are linked to limitations in financial resources and human capacity, which often results in a focus on more tangible policies in the fisheries sector than transparency.
Comoros is demonstrating through structural reforms their initiative to advance digital transformation and e-governance and thereby increase transparency and public access to online information. These reforms include the Stratégie Comores Numérique 2028 (Comoros Digital Strategy), the establishment of the Agence Nationale de Développement du Numérique (National Agency for Digital Development), and the Plan Comores Émergent 2020-2030 (Comoros Emerging Plan). The role of digitization a lever of economic development is centralized acknowledged in these documents, such as the important of addressing low internet usage in Comoros at approximately 8% (according to 2017 ITU estimates).
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