a. Rationale. The African Ocean Environment is composed of wide continental shelves, estuaries, coastal lagoons, mangroves and wetlands, coastal plains with isolated mountainous extensions of the African platform.

Covering two oceans (the Atlantic and the Indian) and two large seas (the Mediterranean and the Red), the marine environment of Africa is both important economically and sensitive environmentally. The Western Indian Ocean comprises a large area with five mainland coastal States and five island States. This area consists of two large marine ecosystems (LMEs)— the Somali Current LME and the Agulhas Current LME. There are twenty (20) African coastal States bordering the Atlantic Ocean, including the small-island developing archipelago State of Cape Verde and other islands that are dependent territories of European countries. The Atlantic Ocean contains three LMEs— the Benguela Current LME, the Guinea Current LME and the Canary Current LME. There are two other LMEs: the Mediterranean Sea LME with five African States, and the Red Sea LME with three African States. The presence of these LMEs and extensive continental shelf areas result in an abundance of living marine resources. The seabed is also well endowed with non-living resources such as oil, gas, metals, minerals and sand, but with a few exceptions these have not been highly exploited.

The recent international agreements on oceans and Seas foster the role of regional organizations in meeting the contemporary challenge for sustainable ocean management and development. Many of the Member States of the Organization of African Unity have large Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) that contain significant resources. Most of them have experienced great difficulties with the effective management of their EEZs. Furthermore, one of the most important objectives assigned to the Inter-African Committee on Oceanography Sea and Inland Fisheries in the early seventies was to provide OAU Members States with the necessary advise on the management of their marine environment and resources for the benefit of the African populations.

b. African Marine Environment and International Preoccupations. International preoccupations about the Ocean environment led to various agreements that extended the provisions of the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III), which provided coastal States with sovereign and jurisdictional rights over 200 nautical miles EEZs with management responsibilities for marine resources within these zones. The most important of these were: the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), Agenda 21, Chapter 17, which deals with the sustainable development of the Oceans; the Bio-diversity and Climate Change Conventions; the Global Action Plan for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land Based Sources; the 1995 United Nations Agreement on Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks; the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries; and the 1995 Kyoto Declaration and Plan of Action on the Sustainable Contribution of Fisheries to Food Security.

The salient features for the new regime for Ocean management and development are: 1. the concept of sustainable development for ocean management and development; 2. the extension of management authority for fisheries outside EEZ limits to international and regional fisheries management bodies; and 3. the provision of principles and measures for sustainable ocean management. Sustainable development of oceans transcends marine boundaries such as EEZs that, in most cases, do not cover complete ecological zones. This is true in general. It is more so in Africa where artificial borders were inherited from the former colonial system. Many countries are sharing the same specific ecological zone for fisheries resources, and in many cases, because the continental shelf extends beyond 200 miles, the ecological zone extends beyond EEZs limits. There are also problems with pool resources, such as gas and oil. Many boundary disputes or conflicts in our continent are the result of or were initiated by disagreement in resources sharing.

Sustainable ocean development overlaps land boundaries due to the ecological and economic interfacing of sea and land in the coastal zone. The management implications of this interface for sustainable development are that coastal zone management and ocean management must be integrated within one another. The oceans and the environment are also totally interwoven and part of a single ecosystem. Following Mitchell (1996), the management of the ocean ecosystem consists of three different management zones: i. the coastal zone; ii. the EEZ under coastal State jurisdiction; and iii. the area outside the 200-miles limit under the global jurisdiction of the International Sea Bed Authority (ISBA) for seabed resources or international or regional management organizations for fisheries.

It is clear that coastal zone and EEZ ocean areas are national responsibilities, and there are three requirements for sustainable ocean management:

1. first, there must be a strategy for this purpose;
2. second, there must be appropriate organizational mechanisms; and
3. third, there must be implementation programmes with clear-cut objectives and goals