A smartphone app that logs data on fish catches is giving small-scale fishers in South Africa hope they can persuade the government to allocate them more of what they regard as their traditional fishing rights.

Abalobi, the app which is named for the isiXhosa phrase abalobi bentlanzi,meaning “someone who fishes”, aims to give small-scale fishers the data to empower themselves and convince others.

Co-produced by the University of Cape Town, traditional fishers and the new small-scale fisheries unit in the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), the app lets fishers log their catches. They can record what they caught, when, where, using what method and how much they sold the fish for, among other things.

For more, find the article — originally published in The Guardian — here.