SA fisher-led nonprofit Abalobi hopes to reel in huge global prize with tech-powered approach

A typical small-scale fishing boat off the southern coast of South Africa. Photo: Abalobi

19 May 2025

The company’s approach to sustainable fishing and helping small-scale fishers thrive has netted it global recognition as a finalist in the 2025 Global Food System Challenge.

Abalobi (“fishers” in isiXhosa) is a South African social enterprise that aims to revolutionise the way we catch and buy fish – and its modern app-based approach, which connects local small-scale fisher groups with shops, chefs and anyone who wants to buy fish, is already having a global impact.

Abalobi has just been named one of four finalists for the Grand Prize in the 2025 Global Food System Challenge. The Muizenberg-based nonprofit, whose model has been piloted in more than 10 other countries, aims to transform the lives and livelihoods of the world’s 500 million small-scale fishers by helping them to manage climate change and protect their employment.

Abalobi is fisher-led and its vision is “to cultivate thriving, equitable and climate-resilient small-scale fishing communities” by supporting small-scale fishers along the entire South African coastline to fish sustainably while continuously improving their fishing practices and earnings.

Its tech platform and programme connects fisher groups and, increasingly, fisher cooperatives with markets, training and financial services. “Fish with a story” is the South African brand for the fish that gets channelled through the Abalobi Marketplace app, which connects buyers and sellers, putting “traceable, storied seafood supplied by local small-scale fishers” in the palm of your hand.

Abalobi Marketplace also offers additional technology to fishers and is used in other parts of the world. One can also shop without the app via the “Fish with a Story” webshop, online via Babylonstoren or in person at Checkers and other smaller brick-and-mortar shops.

“We had this ‘aha’ moment seven to eight years ago,” says Serge Raemaekers, one of Abalobi’s founders and its executive director. “You go to restaurants in Cape Town, even branded or marketed as restaurants where you can eat seafood from South Africa, but the main items on the menu are not from fishers landing their catch nearby.

“The prawns are from Asia, the salmon is from Norway or Scotland, the squid is from Patagonia, the hake is from trawlers or longliners. You do not easily find products from the fishers who are literally fishing a couple of miles from those restaurants.”

Raemaekers, a group of fishers and University of Cape Town colleagues, including Abalobi cofounders Abongile Ngqongwa, now director of partnerships, and Nicolaas Waldeck, now food security programme director, were at the time (in 2017) working in a research programme at the university that focused on the “co-production of knowledge”.

“At the same time,” Raemaekers recalls, “[we were] working with all these fishers catching these [fish] species and logging them, and we thought, hey, we don’t have enough fish markets in South Africa where these worlds come together, so in the absence of that, why not create a virtual marketplace?”

And thus Abalobi was born, meeting the need for small-scale fishers in South Africa to sell their wares, and the needs of local restaurant chefs, supermarkets and any home cook with a smartphone – now countrywide – to buy fresh, sustainably caught fish (Abalobi delivers).

“For small-scale fishers,” Raemaekers says, “the biggest [issue] is they think there’s a price [for their catch], but once back at the harbour, that price is way lower or there’s not a market for what they have.

“On the other hand, restaurants are saying, ‘Yes, I want to support small-scale fishers but I don’t know where to go’.”

With there being about 500 million small-scale fishers around the world, Raemaekers, who has a PhD in fisheries science from Rhodes University, wanted to understand certain aspects of the industry.

“How do you connect with communities that have deep, rich, local knowledge? What was going on in coastal communities, socially, economically, in the roles of women, in food security?” he explains.

Abalobi A typical small-scale fishing boat off the southern coast of South Africa. (Photo: Abalobi)

“How do you bring that knowledge in a respectful way to the table? How do you bring that important information into a fisheries-development approach? How do you support the livelihoods of half a billion people while also protecting the oceans and marine life?

“Globally, in the ocean and climate emergency, for the 500 million people around the world who are fishing as small-scale, subsistence, artisanal fishers, how do we support them on their journey towards sustainable livelihoods?” Raemaekers asks. “For us that’s the most important aspect of this ocean and climate emergency.”

How Abalobi works

Abalobi “tries to do three things well”, Raemaekers says. First, data collection and data-driven tools and analysis, codesigned with fishers, to help them improve their fishing business and practices.

Second, skills building – mostly training via hybrid e-learning. Third, connecting fishers with a dependable and transparent marketplace.

Practically, the “data” bit is shorthand for a vast range of digital tools (including apps such as WhatsApp and data visualisations) to help fishers articulate their work and collect and analyse data on their catches and their businesses.

“We spend a lot of time engaging with fishers around the notion that data is power,” Raemaekers emphasises, “and if you use it, you can move the needle on a lot of things.”

Skills building has evolved into an extensive e-learning programme. It includes coaches working with fisher groups on digital literacy, financial management, marketing, conflict resolution, organisational development and climate change. And, piggybacking on the data and skills aspects, Abalobi enables a hugely expanded marketplace for the fishers.

“To really unlock opportunities in fishing communities, we’ve built a marketplace that connects all these fisher groups with you and me, with retailers, with exporters,” Raemaekers explains.

What does this mean for consumers wanting to buy fresh fish straight from the source? In short, they can ask an app to alert them to a particular type of fish when it’s caught, place an order and have it delivered to their door. It’s local, sustainably caught, reasonably priced fish harvested by small-scale fishers.

The fishers receive fair prices for their low-impact catch without a middleman gouging their share or inflating the price to the consumer. They also get skills building, cumulative data collection on their catches and their revenues, and guaranteed access to a national marketplace – not just the quayside sales at the harbour from which they may or may not make a living, and have no guarantee of sales or of the volumes a buyer may want. (Pre-orders from larger buyers help with that.)

For the fishing communities of all the participating fishers (Abalobi welcomes anyone who wants to participate), it also means enhanced food security through programmes that so far have benefited 8,000 beneficiaries to move from being food insecure to food secure (having access to adequate food at all times).

“We were working with groups of fishers who were codesigning [with us] and they were starting to use [our] mobile apps to record expenses, catches, income – it was an accounting tool but then it was also aggregating data,” Raemaekers says, explaining how an academic project turned into a vibrant and growing social enterprise.

Registered as a nonprofit in 2017, Abalobi, through Raemaekers and cofounders Ngqongwa and Waldeck, started to raise more funding, which allowed more people to work full-time.

“Suddenly we had some staff and needed to stand on our own feet. There was momentum, fishers liked it – it was not just a research project,” Raemaekers says. “They wanted to use it every day… and we knew that to grow it, it needed funding.”

At that point “it had a boring academic name, but as the fishers started engaging with it, they started calling it Abalobi”.

Making an impact

The organisation now employs 50 people full-time and another 70 part-time, with a particular focus on women in fisher communities. It supports 27 fisher collectives in South Africa and Kenya (a total of 7,322 small-scale fisher beneficiaries).

Its impacts – checking the social, economic and ecological boxes – include annual revenues of almost $2-million, of which $1.67-million is channelled directly into small-scale fishing communities.

Abalobi’s list of prizes and accolades is long and illustrious, and includes the Earthshot Prize (“Revive Our Oceans” finalist); World Economic Forum-UpLink (UpLink Innovator); Ocean Resilience Innovation Challenge (winner); and the Zayed Sustainability Prize (Food Prize finalist).

Raemaekers became an Ashoka Fellow in 2024 for “disrupting the traditional seafood supply chain and changing consumer behaviour by empowering small-scale fishers with data-driven technology, direct market access and the necessary tools to run sustainable, ethical and profitable fishing businesses”.

The winners of the Global Food System Challenge “Seeding the Future” prizes will be announced next month, say its organisers, the Institute of Food Technologists and the Van Lengerich Foundation. But winner or not, Raemaekers, Waldeck and Ngqongwa are keeping their eyes on the real prize.

“We’re honoured to be named a finalist in this process,” Raemaekers said on hearing the news. “This kind of recognition supports the hard work of a lot of fishers, fishermen and fisherwomen, who have put in the hard work to get us to where we are – their efforts to drive ocean sustainability really matter.

“And hopefully, it helps to connect with and convince a whole lot of other players within this ecosystem that this is worth pursuing.” DM

The overall winners of the 2025 Global Food System Challenge will be announced in June. Thirteen winners in three categories will each be awarded part of $1-million in prize funding, and a peer-reviewed, interactive database will showcase their innovations in forums such as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and its World Food Programme.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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How Abalobi works

Making an impact