Presented by
Emmanuel Akyeampong, PhD
Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and
African American Studies, Harvard University
Minister for Worship and Formation, Harvard University Memorial Church
In the 1960s, economist and anthropologist Polly Hill dubbed Ghanaians “Pan-African fisherman.” Ghanaian fishermen could be found all along the West African coast from the Gambia to the Niger Delta. Today, Ghana accounts for about 70 to 80 percent of all pelagic fish catches (sardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel) in the Gulf of Guinea. Yet in the past two to three decades, annual catches of small pelagic fish there have declined precipitously, plummeting from 270,000 metric tons in 1990s to 16,000 metric tons in 2016. The factors accounting for the decline are complex: overfishing, ocean warming, the menace of foreign industrial trawlers, and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices. The collapse of marine fisheries has generated a debate about customary practices rooted in indigenous religion that treated the sea as sacred space and regulated fishing practices. Has social change and religious pluralism undermined the ethics of conservation? How can the ethics of conservation be rehabilitated as part of the multi-pronged effort to revive marine fisheries along the West African coast?
Admission to the talk is free and open to the public, and lunch will be provided. Guests are encouraged to arrive at 11:45am for refreshments.
Sponsored as part of the Leir Lecture Series by the School of Climate, Environment, and Society; the Alice Coonley Higgins Institute for Arts and Humanities; the Marsh Institute; the Center for Gender, Race, and Area Studies; and the Departments of English: of History; of Language, Literature, and Culture; and of Sustainability and Social Justice at Clark University
About the Speaker
Emmanuel Akyeampong is the Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, and the Minister for Worship and Formation at Harvard University Memorial Church. He served as the Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard Center for African Studies from July 2016 to June 2023. Akyeampong is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK). He obtained his PhD in History from the University of Virginia in 1993, and his MDiv from Andover Newton Theological School in 2014. He received an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Ghana in 2018, and an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Cape Coast in 2023. Akyeampong is the author and editor of several books and articles including Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (2023); Between the Sea and the Lagoon: An Eco-Social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana (2001); and Drink, Power, and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, c.1800 to Recent Times (1996). He served as co-chief editor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for the Dictionary of African Biography, 6 vols. (2012). Akyeampong is a principal investigator for one of the inaugural grants from the Harvard Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, “Examining the Impact of Sea-Level Rise, Urban Flooding, and Coastal Erosion on Settlement and Livelihoods in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria.”
