Fisheries growth amid sustainability evidence gaps across West Africa

Abstract National fisheries production is often used to support food-security and blue-economy narratives, but aggregate output does not establish whether ecological condition, fishing-dependent livelihoods and monitoring capacity are adequately documented. We integrate a complete 1990–2023 production panel for 17 West African countries with a verified inland-fisheries evidence base and a non-compensatory four-domain diagnostic. Regional production increased by 173.1%, yet production prominence was unrelated to socioeconomic evidence coverage or monitoring capacity. Ecological evidence was available for only ten countries and was inversely associated with production prominence within that selected subset. Baseline rules identified ecological–social mismatches in Nigeria, Senegal and Guinea; visibility–information mismatches in Mauritania, Cameroon and Sierra Leone; and ecological concern among several lower-prominence countries. Four of six compound classifications were stable across all 81 threshold scenarios. The findings show that production growth and sustainability evidence are distinct policy objects and should be reported separately.