Expression of Interest: Mini Blue Economy Innovation Challenge: Catalyzing Market-Driven Innovations across the Fishery Ecosystem

**1. Background and Context**

The fisheries sector presents a significant opportunity for blue economy development in Somaliland. This abundant marine resource presents significant opportunities to drive economic growth, strengthen food and nutrition security, create employment, diversify livelihoods, and expand private sector investment through the blue economy. As demand for fish continues to increase both domestically and regionally, the fisheries sector has considerable potential to stimulate enterprise development, promote value addition, improve household incomes, and contribute to Somaliland's broader economic transformation.

Berbera plays a central role within this opportunity as one of Somaliland's principal fisheries hubs. The city supports a dynamic and interconnected ecosystem comprising artisanal fishers, boat owners, fishmongers, processors, transporters, retailers, cooperatives, women-led enterprises, financial institutions, government agencies, private sector actors, and supporting service providers. Together, these actors contribute to the harvesting, handling, processing, transportation, marketing, and distribution of fish to local consumers as well as inland markets such as Hargeisa, Burao, and Borama. Beyond the direct fish trade, the ecosystem also creates opportunities for businesses providing cold-chain services, transport, equipment maintenance, financial services, digital technologies, logistics, and business development support.

Despite this significant potential, the fisheries sector remains underdeveloped due to a range of persistent and interconnected constraints that limit productivity, competitiveness, and enterprise growth. Limited cold-chain infrastructure, weak post-harvest handling and preservation systems, inadequate fish-quality management, fragmented market coordination, limited business management capacity, and restricted access to finance and higher-value markets continue to constrain the sector's development. Climate variability has further increased uncertainty by disrupting traditional fishing patterns and seasonal predictability, resulting in fluctuating fish supply, market volatility, post-harvest losses, and reduced incomes for fishing households. At the same time, limited value addition, weak customer and market intelligence, insufficient business services, and uneven access to productive assets continue to reduce the ability of enterprises to capture greater value from the sector.

Many of these challenges are systemic rather than isolated. Weak fish handling practices reduce product quality before fish even reaches storage facilities, while unreliable cold-chain systems, inadequate transportation, and inconsistent quality management contribute to additional losses further along the value chain. Informal market coordination, limited access to timely market information, and fluctuating demand often force fishers and traders to sell rapidly at lower prices rather than optimize value. Access to productive assets such as boats, fishing gear, refrigeration equipment, and processing facilities remains uneven, limiting opportunities for enterprise growth and innovation. While these constraints affect the broader fishery ecosystem, they are experienced differently depending on an actor's role within the value chain, level of asset ownership, market influence, business capacity, and access to finance. Women and youth, who participate extensively in processing, retailing, and value addition, often experience these barriers more acutely due to limited ownership of productive assets, reduced bargaining power, and fewer opportunities to access larger-scale business financing and leadership positions.

Recognizing that effective innovation must be grounded in the realities of those operating within the sector, Somali Response Innovation Lab (SomRIL) undertook a fishery ecosystem mapping in Berbera to better understand the dynamics, relationships, constraints, and opportunities shaping the local fisheries ecosystem. The mapping was complemented by a Human-Centered Design (HCD)-based innovation convener involving actors from across the fishery ecosystem, including cooperatives, women-led Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs), fishers, processors, traders, transporters, and other ecosystem stakeholders. Through ecosystem mapping, challenge mapping, actor journey mapping, and solution ideation, the process generated evidence on where value is created and lost across the value chain, how different actors experience shared challenges, and where opportunities exist for innovation, enterprise development, and ecosystem strengthening. Rather than identifying isolated technical problems, the findings demonstrated that many of the sector's constraints are interconnected and require solutions that combine improved business practices, market systems, supporting services, infrastructure, financing, and collaboration across ecosystem actors.

Building on previous World Vision investments in the Berbera fisheries ecosystem, including support to the Horseed Fishery Association and women-led Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs), the ToR seeks to strengthen existing institutions and enterprises rather than create parallel structures. Successful innovations should leverage these existing platforms to generate sustainable livelihoods, improve market participation, and increase the long-term resilience of fishing households.

Building on these insights, SomRIL is launching the **Mini Blue Economy Innovation Challenge: Catalyzing Market-Driven Innovations across the Fishery Ecosystem**. The Challenge aims to identify, support, and pilot innovative, market-driven solutions that respond directly to the opportunities and constraints identified through the ecosystem mapping and innovation convener. By supporting locally led innovations that improve fish quality, reduce post-harvest losses, strengthen market access, expand access to productive assets and financial services, promote value addition, and improve coordination across the ecosystem, the Challenge seeks to catalyze practical solutions that strengthen the competitiveness, resilience, inclusiveness, and long-term sustainability of Somaliland's fishery ecosystem. These solutions should consider scale from the very beginning, taking into account business models that can be scaled within humanitarian programs and on the market.

**2. Purpose of the Mini Blue Economy Innovation Challenge**

The **Mini Blue Economy Innovation Challenge** aims to identify, support, and accelerate locally led, market-driven innovations that address critical constraints while unlocking new opportunities across Somaliland's fishery ecosystem. Building on the insights generated through SomRIL's ecosystem mapping and Human-Centered Design (HCD)-based innovation convener in Berbera, the Challenge seeks to stimulate practical solutions that improve productivity, reduce post-harvest losses, strengthen market linkages and competitiveness, promote value addition, expand access to productive assets and business support services, and foster more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable fishery enterprises.

The Challenge places particular emphasis on innovations that generate tangible economic benefits for existing participants within the fishery ecosystem, particularly members of the Horseed Fishery Association, women participating in World Vision-supported Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs), and youth-led enterprises. Successful innovations should demonstrate a clear pathway to increasing household incomes, creating decent employment opportunities, reducing poverty, and strengthening the long-term commercial viability of these target groups.

The Challenge is designed to move beyond identifying sector challenges by supporting innovators, entrepreneurs, cooperatives, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), private sector actors, and women- and youth-led enterprises to further develop, validate