Asia just put $6 billion on its ocean. Where is ours?

Every fishmonger at the Tema fishing harbour can tell you the same story. The canoes go further, stay out longer and come back with less.

Premix fuel is costly, the nets are old and the bank will not lend because fishing is “too risky”. Meanwhile, Ghana imports fish to feed its own people. This is not a story of an ocean without value. It is a story of an ocean without investment.

On 19 September 2026, in Manila, the President of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Masato Kanda, told ASEAN economic ministers that his bank would mobilise up to $6 billion between 2026 and 2030 for the ASEAN Blue Economy Initiative. The money will go into fisheries, aquaculture, coastal resilience and port linked value chains, and into cleaning up the waste and wastewater that flow from land into the sea. His message was simple: the ocean is not just an environmental concern, it is the economic foundation of Southeast Asia.

I read that announcement twice, and one question kept coming back to me: where is Africa’s $6 billion blue plan, and where is Ghana’s? This article is my attempt to answer that question honestly, and to suggest what we must do about it.

Why Asia Is Betting on Its Seas

The ADB did not act out of charity. It acted because the numbers made sense. Southeast Asia produces about one fifth of the world’s fisheries and aquaculture output, and its ports, coastal logistics and tourism carry trade and jobs for millions. Yet that natural wealth is being eaten away by plastic, overfishing and the destruction of mangroves and reefs. The bank estimates that coastal floods alone could cost the region about $11.5 billion every year. Spending $6 billion over five years to protect an asset that size is not generosity; it is good business.

Three features of the initiative deserve our attention. First, it is part of a larger $30 billion package the ADB has promised for ASEAN priorities by 2030, which tells us the ocean has moved from the margins to the centre of development finance. Second, it treats the sea and the land as one system, investing upstream in solid waste and water services because most marine pollution starts in our cities. Third, it is designed to pull in private capital through innovative finance, not to replace it. Public money goes first to make projects bankable, and private money follows.

Africa Has the Ocean, but Not the Money

Africa does not lack ocean wealth. According to the State of Africa’s Blue Economy 2026 report, presented at the Third Africa Blue Economy Conference in Luanda in July, our blue economy is already worth more than $298 billion a year and employs over 40 million people. About 200 million Africans depend on fish from our seas, and roughly 90 percent of the continent’s trade moves by sea. The African Union’s own official admitted at that conference that too many blue economy projects still depend on outside agencies, and that there is a wide gap between the policies we write and the projects we deliver.

We have the strategies. The African Union adopted the Africa Blue Economy Strategy in 2019. The African Development Bank (AfDB) supports blue economy skills, including a new marine science scholarship with Shanghai Ocean University this year. But Africa still has no dedicated, continental blue investment window of the scale the ADB has just announced. Calls are growing for the AfDB to fill that gap, and they are right.

There are African examples to build on. Seychelles turned part of its national debt into ocean protection through a debt for nature swap in 2016 and then issued the world’s first sovereign blue bond in 2018, backed by the World Bank. Gabon completed a debt for nature conversion in 2023 that freed money for marine conservation. These were small deals by Asian standards, but they proved that African countries can pioneer blue finance when the structures are right.

Where Ghana Stands

To be fair, Ghana has taken real steps. Parliament passed the Fisheries and Aquaculture Act, 2025 (Act 1146). We declared our first Marine Protected Area at Cape Three Points. In December 2025, Cabinet approved a National Blue Economy Strategy built on six pillars, one of which is blue finance, and agreed to set up a Blue Economy Commission. In October 2025, the Vice President announced an Aquaculture Development Fund. These are good foundations.

But foundations are not a house. Our fish supply deficit was more than 640,000 tonnes in 2021, and the annual supply gap has been put at around $800 million. Aquaculture has grown to about 100,000 tonnes a year, yet farmers still struggle with feed costs, disease and lack of credit. Our coastline from Keta to Axim is losing land to the sea. The National Blue Economy Strategy has not yet been fully costed, and no one has told Ghanaians how it will be paid for. A strategy without a price tag remains a wish list.

What Africa Must Do

1. Create an Africa Blue Economy Facility. The AfDB should lead a blue investment window of at least $6 billion for 2027 to 2031, cofinanced with Afreximbank, the Africa Finance Corporation, regional development banks and climate funds, and focused on fisheries, aquaculture, ports, coastal resilience and pollution control.
2. Build a pipeline of bankable projects. Money follows good projects. A continental project preparation fund should help countries turn plans into investment ready proposals with clear revenues, risks and returns.
3. Use smarter instruments. Africa should scale up blue bonds, debt for nature swaps, guarantees and blended finance, learning from Seychelles and Gabon, so that public money draws in private capital rather than standing alone.
4. Invest in ocean data. No investor will fund what we cannot measure. Shared stock assessments, coastal mapping and pollution monitoring should be treated as core infrastructure.

What Ghana Must Do

1. Put a price on our strategy. Government should cost the National Blue Economy Strategy and publish a Ghana Blue Investment Plan, with an ambition of $6 billion over ten years from public funds, development partners, private investors and blue bonds.
2. Give the Blue Economy Commission teeth. It should have a dedicated blue finance unit to prepare projects, engage the AfDB and other lenders and track every cedi invested.
3. Capitalise the Aquaculture Development Fund properly. It should work with commercial banks through credit guarantees so that fish farmers, many of them women and young people, can borrow at fair rates.
4. Explore a blue bond or debt for nature swap. As our debt position stabilises, a guaranteed blue bond or a swap linked to marine protection could raise money for fisheries recovery and coastal defence.
5. Protect the asset we are financing. Enforcement of Act 1146 against illegal fishing and saiko, more protected areas beyond Cape Three Points and serious action on the plastic waste that chokes the Korle Lagoon and our beaches must go hand in hand with new money.
6. Lead the call at the AfDB. Ghana should rally ECOWAS coastal states to table a formal request for an Africa Blue Economy Facility at the next AfDB Annual Meetings.

Conclusion

Asia has shown that when a region treats its ocean as an economic asset, the money follows. Africa has a bigger coastline, a younger population and an ocean economy already worth almost $300 billion a year. What we lack is not opportunity; it is organised, ambitious finance. The ADB’s $6 billion is a signal, and signals are meant to be acted upon. If Africa does not build its own blue fund, others will decide the future of our seas for us. Ghana, with its long maritime history and its new strategy in hand, should be the first to say: here is our plan, here is the price, and here is how we will pay for it. CIMAG stands ready to bring government, banks, investors and coastal communities to the same table to make that plan real.

By: Albert Derrick Fiatui

The writer is the Executive Director at the Centre for International Maritime Affairs, Ghana (CIMAG), an Advocacy, Research and Operational Policy Think- Tank, with focus on the Maritime Industry (Blue Economy) and general Ocean Governance. He is a Maritime Policy, Ocean Governance and Coastal Development Expert.

Email: info@cimaghana.org /albert@cimaghana.org