WISE – Wireless Solutions for Fisheries in Senegal

Senegal's fisheries employ more than 600,000 people – 17% of the national workforce – and provide 70% of the country's animal-based protein. About 90% of the catch comes from artisanal fishers using traditional methods, and their earnings hinge on weather, market prices, access to capital, and consumer demand. The women who process the catch face the same pressures with even less access to phones, credit, and training.

WISE, funded by Qualcomm Wireless Reach and implemented by FHI 360 from 2014 to 2021, built a digital platform around those realities. It alerts fishers when they cross restricted zones or international borders, lets a stranded crew send its GPS location to the coastguard, charts safe courses to and from fishing zones, and delivers navigation information and weather forecasts. A virtual marketplace helps fishers and processors negotiate the best prices for fresh and processed fish, digital financial services extend affordable loans, and mobile video teaches processing best practices and hygiene. Users interact through a visual interface, voice commands, or an AI-powered chatbot – built on open-source frameworks that work even on 2G networks.

Deployed at Senegal's three major fish landing and processing sites – Mbour, Joal, and Dakar – the platform helped fish processors grow their businesses ten-fold, from 100 kg to 1,000 kg of fish per person per month, and raised fishermen's incomes by as much as $550 per year. Senegal's Food Security Commission uses WISE market prices to assess national food security and shares them with seven West African countries, and the Ministry of Digital Economy and Telecommunications is leading the platform's national scale-up.

Because women are central to the value chain, closing the gender gap was a design requirement, not an afterthought: the project provided smartphones, connectivity, and ongoing digital-literacy training to women's fish-processing cooperatives. In 2020, WISE was named a World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Prize Champion by the UN's International Telecommunication Union, selected in the e-agriculture category.

A collaboration of FHI 360, Qualcomm Wireless Reach, Senegal's Ministry of Digital Economy and Telecommunications, Ministry of Fisheries and Maritime Economy, and Food Security Commission, with Intermondes, the mobile operator Free (formerly Tigo), and Tata Consultancy Services.