Chiboni Evans
Executive Director, Strataconsult SA
Presentation: Enterprise Development-The Unlikely Partner for Resource Conservation: How the development of South Africa’s small scale fisheries sector has helped preserve resources
This presentation will focus on work done by Stratconsult SA within local fishing communities (in the Western Cape of South Africa) together with public and private sector stakeholders to create viable small businesses for traditional/artisanal fishermen thereby ensuring the sustainable exploitation of a much sought after and limited resource. Emphasis will be placed on the exploitation and conservation of the West Coast Rock Lobster (Jasus Lalandi), a species that is under threat and heavily contested for by both the small scale and large commercial fishers in South Africa.
We will discuss how the formation of small business enterprises for these fishermen has resulted in positive governmental and private sector initiatives which have given these traditional fishers a sense of pride and responsibility and a belief in the need to work with authorities to preserve and conserve their marine resources.
Biography:
Chiboni is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Certified Accountants who studied and trained in Zambia and the United Kingdom before returning to South Africa from exile in 1995. She has worked as a commercial and financial accountant for various multinational start-up operations in Africa including Cargill in Zambia, the Mars Corporation and SAB Miller in South Africa. Chiboni has pioneered and designed a number of innovative business and technological solutions. Most notable has been the development of a novel technological solution internationally branded as MARITRAQ™, which is aimed at assisting the global artisanal fishing sector to operate in a safer and environmentally sustainable manner.
Over the last six years through her work with fishing communities based in the rural and marginalised sectors of South Africa she has developed, together with fellow consultants in Stratconsult SA, innovative business and process management solutions that have successfully assisted small scale fishers sustainably commercialise their fishing activities. Such solutions as developed are also being tested in the rural agricultural communities of South Africa.
Chiboni has a great interest in rural development and through her involvement with fishing communities and related projects, has fully embraced her stated vision of “changing the fisherman’s world”. Her key focus has been on ensuring that these communities are brought into 21st Century practices through the introduction of first world technology and business management processes whilst at the same time maintaining the traditional methods and practices that these communities possess, which are more sustainable. Chiboni also chairs the Board of the South African Electrotechnical Export Council. The Council is a non-profit organization, which is a public private partnership with the South Africa Department of Trade and Industry and represents over 90 South African registered companies engaged in exports.
