Editorial on the Research TopicAfrican ocean stewardship: navigating ocean conservation and sustainable marine and coastal resource management in Africa 1 Introduction
Africa's image, past and presentWith a total coastline of 26,000 nautical miles and combined Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) area of 13,000 million km 2 (Surbun, 2021) the oceans surrounding the second largest continent and its adjacent islands are among the most resource rich and biodiverse on Earth. Hosting some of the most productive large marine ecosystems anywhere (Treǵarot et al., 2020), Africa's coastal resources still support livelihoods as they have for millennia and continue to attract international interests in harvesting, mining, coastal development, energy, and tourism (Karani and Failler, 2020). Despite this there remain challenges in distributing benefits derived from exploiting and managing its marine resources back to the citizens of the 39 African coastal and island states. This is often attributed to the continent's long colonial history and legacy, but also on ineffective governance, corruption, security, lack of technical or scientific capacity, and limited access to investment and development opportunities (Karani et al., 2022).Infamously depicted as the 'Dark Continent' by the Victorian explorer Henry Morton Stanley 1 , this historic metaphor of Africa as 'the other' or being somehow different or inferior relative to the power-bearing west or global north (Jarosz, 1992) continues in relation to topics such as immigration, global wealth and health inequalities, human rights Frontiers in Marine Science frontiersin.org 01