Before any technology is designed, before any innovation is unveiled, there is a simple but often overlooked step: asking the people who live with the risks every day what safety actually means to them.
In many coastal communities, small-scale fishing fleets operate outside major shipping and offshore networks. The vessels and communities often have limited access to safety protocols, digital alerts, climate/adverse-weather data, and formal supply-chain linkages. For Jamestown and Chorkor’s artisanal fishermen, safety is not an abstract policy term; it is woven into exhausted muscles pulling nets at dawn, calculations made in darkness about whether to sail or stay ashore, and whispered prayers when the sea turns.
Six days a week, crews of four to seven men leave shore around 2:00 AM and return near 8:00 AM, drawing on generations of knowledge to read winds, waves, and sky as they balance livelihood against the constant possibility of loss.
Nii Ayi, a fisherman who has spent forty years living and working in Jamestown, offers a window into these realities. His crew often multitasks intensely, managing nets, lifting fish, and operating the outboard motor, especially when fewer hands are available. The hazards he describes are both specific and relentless: submerged rocks that reveal themselves only when it’s too late; sudden winds that rise from the east and seem to come from beneath the sea; turbulent waves and contrary currents that waste scarce petrol and endanger lives; engine failures far from shore, where formal rescue systems are thin or absent. Experience guides every decision; if conditions look rough but appear likely to calm, crews may proceed, but when forecasts or local signs point to serious danger, they cancel trips, accepting economic loss as the price of protecting lives and equipment.
When Information Arrives too Late or Not at All
These daily decisions are made in an environment where information is partial, uneven, and fragile. The Ghana Meteorological Agency issues warnings, sometimes relayed through personal calls from contacts in coastal towns. Fishermen across Accra, Jamestown, Chorkor, Bortianor, and Tema value these alerts when they arrive early enough to change plans. There is, as one fisherman put it, “no point in going out despite a credible warning: fuel is wasted, effort is wasted, and lives are put at risk.” Yet gaps remain. Coverage is inconsistent, and when alerts occasionally prove inaccurate, trust can erode. Once boats are at sea, communication becomes even more precarious: mobile phones must be carefully shielded from water, network coverage drops offshore, and in an emergency, help often depends on reaching another canoe nearby, if there is signal, if the phone works, and if someone is close enough to respond. Formal emergency response infrastructure is thin; what exists is often informal and community-based, carried by relationships rather than systems.
What Listening Reveals
In response to these realities, the Center for Law and Innovation Policy (CLIP) and the Institute for AI Policy and Governance (AIPG) have spent recent weeks in conversations with artisanal fishermen in Jamestown and Chorkor, not to pitch solutions, but to listen. These interviews form the foundation of the Jamestown–Chorkor Maritime SafetyLink project, a community-driven initiative to build a safety-alert and knowledge-sharing ecosystem designed with, not merely for, coastal fishing communities.
What emerged most clearly was not a lack of knowledge among fishermen, but a profound gap between information that exists and information that reaches the people who need it, in the form they can use, when they need it. Formal alerts, reliable early warnings, and clear pathways to call for help are often absent or inconsistent. Safety systems are frequently designed around small-scale fishers, rather than with them.
Fishermen also describe growing risks linked to the expanding use of artificial light in fishing, as bright underwater lights alter fish behaviour, draw boats into unfamiliar patterns and deeper waters, pushing small wooden canoes farther from shore, often at night and in poor weather, without reliable communication or warnings. For these communities, maritime safety is not primarily about advanced devices or complex interfaces; it is about connection. It means ensuring that weather and sea-state warnings reach fishermen on basic phones, in local languages, and through trusted channels. It means creating dependable ways to call for help when engines fail or storms intensify. It means respecting and building on the expertise fishers already possess, while closing critical information gaps that place lives and livelihoods at risk.
SafetyLink: Connecting Knowledge and Alerts
These insights are directly shaping the design of SafetyLink. Rather than imposing external solutions, we are working with communities to build a system that fits into existing practices and tools. SafetyLink uses AI quietly and responsibly, not as a substitute for local knowledge, but as an integrator that connects information already available. By bringing together weather data, sea-state and tide forecasts, and community observations, AI tools can help detect patterns, anticipate risk windows, and trigger simple, timely alerts using channels fishermen already trust. As one fisherman, Nii Ayi, put it, “Some of us cannot read. But we can listen.” Voice alerts, he explained, would make a real difference to decision-making at sea and on shore.
This co-design approach recognizes that effective maritime safety solutions should not be imposed; they must emerge from genuine partnership, iterative testing, and shared ownership with the people whose lives depend on the sea. Community members are co-architects, not end-users, shaping priorities, validating information flows, and testing formats so that SafetyLink remains grounded in local realities.
Maritime safety is not only about vessels, regulations, or data pipelines. It is about people, livelihoods, and dignity.
SafetyLink is a joint effort of AIPG and CLIP, bringing together policy, history, and community-driven innovation to confront both historical and contemporary challenges in Ghana’s maritime sector. By aligning with national, regional, and continental AI and digital governance initiatives, we are working to ensure that small-scale coastal communities are not left out of emerging digital safety infrastructures.
If you are engaging with these issues, from policy, research, practice, or community organizing, we invite your insights and partnership. Together, it is possible to build safety systems that truly serve the people who need them most.
Institute for AI Policy & Governance 