Slow Food International worked with two women’s groups in Mauritania and Mauritanie 2000, a local NGO, to improve the quality and marketing of mullet bottarga – salt-cured fish roe. Bottarga is exported and sold locally to provide the women with a source of income, and the steady demand for fish has helped to support nomadic communities of Imraguen fisherfolk.

Lessons Learned 

The Problem

The Imraguen are socially-marginalized people who make a living by fishing off the coast of Mauritania. Fish stocks in Mauritanian waters were good, until in 2006 the country sold fishing rights to the European Union in exchange for a reduction in government debt. Many mullet stocks declined to a level considered endangered, threatening both the food supply for the people and the incomes of the women who process the mullet roe.

The Project

Bottarga is produced by carefully removing the egg sacs from gravid female fish and salting them. The cured roe is then pressed lightly between boards and allowed to dry further. Traditionally, men caught the fish, following them along the coast from late October to early January, and women processed the catch to preserve it for the rest of the year, selling the surplus in markets. When the project began, in 1996, production of bottarga was haphazard, often carried out on the beach and plagued by unhygienic conditions and uneven salting and curing, sometimes involving chemically suspect salt. The resulting bottarga was of low quality and potentially unsafe.
A small group of 30 women formed a cooperative that identified and rented modern premises near the port of Nouadhibou. The new workshop offered electricity and running water, refrigerators and more hygienic counters. The women also invested in aprons and gloves, and took more care to remove and rinse the egg sacs carefully before covering them with the correct dose of salt. Once cured, the roe is dried, pressed, and vacuum-packed for export.
The improved ability to turn out top-quality bottarga is the result of a series of exchanges between the Imraguen women and the bottarga producers of Orbetello in Tuscany, Italy, organised by Slow Food. The women learned some simple techniques, honed by the Italians, that helped them to turn out better bottarga. This hands-on training was supported by a handbook that illustrates food practices for working with fish, with text in French and Hassaniya. Over the course of the project, the number of women in the cooperative doubled to around 60, and in 2009 the project expanded to include a second cooperative of 184 women in Nouakchott.
In addition to improving production, the project has also helped the women to promote their product. They have travelled to food events in France and Italy to present their bottarga to international audiences, who are now well acquainted with this high-quality product. With an export market established, the women are now organizing tastings and events in hotels and restaurants in Nouadhibou and Nouakchott to promote the bottarga locally.

Impact

• To date, 244 women have learned to produce high-quality, safe bottarga.
• The two cooperatives are on the way to being able to take care of production and marketing entirely on their own.
• Other groups of women are being trained and in time will join the project.
• Sustainable fishing helps to preserve conditions in the National Park of the Banc d'Arguin.