UCT has offered educational outreach activities for local or national communities to raise awareness about overfishing, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and destructive fishing practices. The University of Cape Town has collaborated with the Abalobi initiative — a mobile- and web-based platform developed to support small-scale fishers in South Africa — to provide training, community engagement and technology transfer that promote sustainable fishing practices, traceability and improved livelihoods.

Abalobi was co-founded by UCT fisheries researcher Dr Serge Raemaekers alongside small-scale fishers and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries (DAFF). UCT supported workshops and co-design of the app, enabling fishers to record catches, engage with cooperatives and access markets. This partnership constitutes an educational outreach activity for coastal fishing communities, raising awareness of responsible fishing practices and contributing to SDG 14 (Life Below Water) and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption & Production).

While the publicly documented evidence dates to the mid-2010s, the ongoing scale-up of the Abalobi platform (now working with over 1,600 fishers in South Africa) indicates sustained impact and relevance to UCT’s community-engagement mandate.