The Audrey Richards Lecture in African Studies 2025

Climate Change and Cultural Change: The Unmaking of Maritime Fishing Traditions in the Gulf of Guinea

Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, Ellen Gurney Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies; Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies

Maritime fishing communities have a reputation for being conservative in their traditions. They often stress that fishing is not just a livelihood but a way of life. Maritime fishing is enmeshed in complex beliefs and practices, and ritual observations regulate sea-fishing. Fishermen have a reverence for the sea, a realm that is both natural and supernatural. In our field work in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria in July 2023 and May 2024, as part of a Climate Adaptation Project in the Gulf of Guinea, we encountered coastal communities caught amid profound social changes. Sea-level rise, coastal erosion, ocean warming, the predation of Chinese trawlers, and artisanal overfishing had depleted stocks of pelagic fish that coastal fishing communities are dependent on. I examine how climate change and responses to declining fish stocks have encouraged changing traditions among fishing communities, aware that environmental change promotes cultural change.

All are welcome to attend. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.