Current fish smoking practices in Ghana is very laborious. It requires fishmongers to utilize smoking ovens stocked with fuelwood burning at very high temperatures. The current designs of traditional ovens lead to a lot of heat loss which could have been used in smoking. Also, traditional ovens consume a large amount of fuelwood, which takes a longer period to smoke and emits high amount of smoke.

However, there are a number of improved fish smoking ovens which are efficient and enhancing the livelihoods of fishmongers. The Ahotor oven, among others, is known to consume 38% less amount of fuelwood and provides fish quality suitable for local and external markets. To bridge the current knowledge gap of fishmongers, CDO organized a learning tour for lead fishmongers from 15 communities to an improved fish smoking center hosted by the Central and Western Fishmongers Improvement Association.

The participating fishmongers were very delighted with the learning tour. It provided them the opportunity to learn about the flaws in their activities. The tour beneficiary fishmongers expressed interest and commitment to organize additional meetings in their communities to disseminate the information on their learnings.