WHAT WE DO

 

Sea PoWer empowers women seaweed farmers through the following actions:

Promoting tubular nets as an innovation to farm seaweed in deeper water

Sea PoWer is promoting tubular nets as a seaweed farming innovation with the power to transform seaweed production and the lives of women who produce it. Seaweed farming in East Africa is mainly a women’s activity but the traditional technology they use is unreliable and damages both their own health and that of coastal ecosystems.

What are tubular nets?

Tubular nets are made from locally-available fishing nets that are cut and manually sewed into “tubes” of approximately 15 meters in length. Bunches of seaweed are “planted” in the nets at regular spacings, using a PVC pipe to do so. 

The nets are then taken on a boat, off shore into deeper water, where they are anchored to the substrate using sandbags at each extremity. Buoys or empty water bottles are typically used to mark and maintain the nets in mid-water, where the seaweed is less exposed to variations in sea water salinity (due to rains) or temperature. The nets can be easily lifted to check on growth. At harvest, the nets and seaweed are hoisted onto the boat and brought ashore where they are opened and the grown seaweed is removed. The nets can be sawn again with small seaweed bunches. 

Challenging gender norms

In Zanzibar, deep-water tubular net seaweed farming is an innovation challenging local norms on what women can or cannot do. Women do not know how to swim, nor do they know how to safely handle a boat or snorkel to go and place the nets off-shore, in deeper water, on their own. Through sensitive swimming and safety at sea training and engagement, Sea PoWer supports women seaweed farmers overcome their fears to go in the water or on a boat, and adopt safer farming practices that do not put their health and lives at risk. For example, we have conducted swimming training courses with all the women seaweed farmers we support to build their confidence and safety in deeper water, where they increasingly need to go to farm seaweed. 

By working together with supportive men from their communities while improving their capacity to safely farm in deeper water, and progressively freeing themselves from their dependence on male boat handlers and snorkelers to farm and get organised, women will be able to increase their control over the entire seaweed production process, continue using the tubular-nets as an environmentally and economically sustainable, and culturally accepted, innovation, and overcome the subordinate position they are in.

Processing and adding value to seaweed, locally and safely

On land, women are missing out on income generation opportunities after harvesting their seaweed because over 90% of Zanzibar seaweed production is exported untransformed. In collaboration with its partners ZaSCI and AFO/SusBlue Shop, Sea PoWer is providing training on value addition to the women it supports so that they consolidate their knowledge and skills to process their seaweed effectively in an environment that is both safe for them and for the consumers of their products.

Seaweed products

Seaweed can be transformed into many products with health and nutrition benefits such as cosmetics (soap, shampoo, lotions) and food (juice, jam, seaweed sticks, salads, cakes, noodles). 

The marketing potential and consumption benefits of seaweed products are under-exploited in Zanzibar and in the Western Indian Ocean region. Besides exports to Europe or the USA, local demand is there. There is a vibrant tourist market in Zanzibar, offering a potential outlay for high-quality, locally-produced cosmetics, and the awareness of the health benefits of consuming seaweed-based food products is rising thanks to local campaigns such as the annual Seaweed Day, or global campaigns about the “Seaweed Revolution”.

Minimizing occupational health hazards

Processing seaweed into cosmetics (soap, shampoo, lotions) involves handling hazardous products. Health and safety protocols must be followed and protective equipment must be worn to prevent burns and harm. We are conducting practical training sessions and raising awareness on these issues in the three groups of women we support.

Sea PoWer is different

Seaweed farming is typically approached from a technological angle and neglects farmers who tend to be considered as a means to an end (e.g. increased productivity). We have turned this around: for Sea PoWer the technology is the means for women’s wellbeing and empowerment.

Sea PoWer is focusing not just on technology (the deep-water tubular nets) know-how but also on everything that surrounds its adoption by women: learning how to swim and feel confident in deeper water, how to handle a boat, working together, managing the production, making decisions, becoming role models for other farmers, progressively changing prevailing gender norms. This is what we have called our “innovation-cum-empowerment” approach.

Sea PoWer is also acutely aware that behaviour change and empowerment do not happen overnight, and that technology promoted in a manner that does not sensitively account for, and challenge, prevailing norms and gender dynamics risks resulting in elite / men capture and backlash for more vulnerable groups (i.e. women).

Sea PoWer is dedicated to ensuring that the tubular net innovation remains (i) fit for purpose, i.e. improves seaweed production, the marine ecosystem and livelihoods, and (ii) in the hands and control of the women seaweed farmers themselves, and is used in a manner that benefits and empowers them.

Developing women's organisational capacity and agency

Women seaweed farmers in Zanzibar are often not organised enough to make their voices heard. Sea PoWer is supporting women seaweed farmers to work together as a group to use the tubular nets, organise their production and grow their organisational capacity and agency.  

Social capital and peer-to-peer learning

Sea PoWer has been supporting women seaweed farmers transition from working on their own to working as a group with the tubular nets, thereby growing their social capital. To reinforce this, Sea PoWer is providing them with leadership and group management skills, enabling them to coordinate their work, make joint decisions, optimally manage their finances and support one another. Sea PoWer is also emphasising peer-to-peer learning across the groups it supports to strengthen mutual knowledge exchanges.

Voice and recognition

Sea PoWer is also encouraging the groups of women seaweed farmers it supports to showcase their work and share their experience widely, as well as become a recognised voice in the policy processes and high-level decisions that will affect them and their communities. In 2017, Sea PoWer women farmers presented their experience with tubular nets at a workshop gathering all the stakeholders of the seaweed industry in Zanzibar. In 2022, it facilitated the participation of a representative of the Pemba group in an event celebrating the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA) 2022 in Dar es Salaam. Sea PoWer has also promoted the engagement of several women from the groups it supports in a UN-Women sponsored consultation to develop the Gender Mainstreaming Strategy and Action Plan that will guide the Ministry of Blue Economy and Fisheries (MoBEF) in Zanzibar, giving a voice to women seaweed farmers in policy processes for the first time.

Training session post-harvest FM

 

Finding a new “power”

Through its actions, Sea PoWer enables women seaweed farmers find what power truly means: