AFRICA’S WHALES, AFRICA’S VOICE: THE COALITION CHALLENGING THE PRO-WHALING BLOC

When Guinean wildlife official Faya Nestor Kondiano attended the last meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), he was shocked by what he witnessed.

West and Central African delegates appeared to be closely coordinated, he said, receiving guidance on when to speak, how to vote and when to use procedural tactics supporting the pro-whaling bloc.

“It was painful to watch our countries surrender their independent voice,” he later told Gambian journalist Mustapha Manneh.

Now, Kondiano is among a growing movement of African officials, scientists and conservationists determined to win that voice back.

Earlier this month, the newly formed West and Central African Coalition for Whales held a public conference to expose the contradiction at the heart of the region’s position at the IWC. Its members are urging governments to stop supporting efforts to weaken whale protection and instead back the proposed South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary.

For decades, countries including Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mauritania, Senegal and Togo have regularly voted alongside pro-whaling nations. Yet none has a commercial whaling industry. Whale meat is not part of their traditional diet and killing whales makes no contribution to regional food security.

Maximin Djondo, Executive Director of the Benin Environment and Education Society, has challenged that argument directly. If African governments are concerned about food security, he says, they should confront the industrial foreign fleets plundering West African fisheries, rather than blaming whales.

The science supports him.

Dr Isaac Okyere, Coordinator of the Ghana Marine Mammals Network at the University of Cape Coast, says the suggestion that whales are responsible for declining fish populations is “not supported by science”. Overfishing, illegal fishing and climate change are the real causes.

Whales actually help to maintain productive oceans. By moving nutrients through the water, they stimulate plankton growth and strengthen the food webs upon which fish populations depend. Protecting whales is therefore part of protecting the future of West Africa’s fishing communities.

The region’s voting record is also difficult to reconcile with its own environmental commitments. Many of these countries support stronger protections for marine wildlife under other international agreements. Their national laws protect whales, while their governments promote sustainable fisheries, marine tourism and the development of a “blue economy”.

Colonel Abba Sonko, a Senegalese wildlife and CITES expert, argues that African governments cannot credibly champion ocean protection elsewhere while obstructing it at the IWC. Their commissioners, he says, should represent West African conservation interests, not those of foreign whaling nations.

Those interests have not always been easy to separate. Japan has provided fisheries aid, infrastructure and technical assistance to developing countries whose delegations subsequently supported its IWC position. Independent academic research has identified a significant relationship between Japanese aid and membership of the pro-whaling bloc, although Japan rejects accusations that it has bought individual votes.

The coalition has now issued a public position statement, reportedly supported by more than 200 African scientists, officials, experts and organisations. It calls for transparent and independent positions at the IWC, opposition to renewed commercial whaling and support for the South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary.

Their intervention could hardly be better timed. At IWC70, Togo and Antigua and Barbuda will advance a proposal that could begin reopening the route towards commercial whaling.

For years, the votes of West and Central African governments have been presented as Africa’s position. The people challenging them are making something increasingly clear.

Africa has another voice. And this time, it intends to be heard.